Chapter 16

“Please tell me that what we’re about to do will be the mint on the pillow at the end of this day,” Emily muttered.

Chelsea glanced over at her with a sympathetic expression. They were hunkered down outside the wheelhouse, watching the shoreline race by them. The low-hanging clouds overhead seemed almost close enough to touch.

Rusty had been right. The cutter had been shadowing them. The minute he turned the catamaran back toward England, the Border Agency ship pursued, slowly closing the distance between the two vessels. Rusty was convinced they would be boarded the instant they put in to port. Which was why Chelsea was in the process of donning her courage like a suit of armor made by the Dwarves of Middle-earth. Or, in short, she was going to need every ounce of chutzpah she possessed for what came next.

“Because I have to admit,” Emily continued, “I’ve had about all the excitement I can stand for one day.”

“It’s not just me, right?” Chelsea asked. “This harebrained scheme feels like seven kinds of wrong to you too?”

The wind and sea spray coming over the side of the boat raised gooseflesh on her arms. The salty smell of the Channel reminded her of the Atlantic back home—and the endless winter storms that had fascinated her as a child.

She recalled the time she and her father stood on their back porch, and her father pointed at the heaving waves tipped in white and hurling themselves against the coastline of Port Royal Sound.

Look at that, sweet girl, he had said. See how mouthy Mother Nature can be when she has something to say?

Chelsea hoped Mother Nature went against type now, took pity on her, and had only nice things to say.

“More like seventeen kinds of wrong,” Emily agreed, her long hair flying wild. “So help me take my mind off what we’re about to do and tell me what happened between you and Zoelner when you two disappeared belowdecks.”

Chelsea opened her mouth to deny that anything had happened, but before she could, Emily interrupted with “And don’t try to say it was nothing. Because Zoelner’s hair looked like it’d gone through hurricane-force winds, and judging by the rash around your mouth, you either gave him a good tongue tango, or else you spent the day lip-locking a porcupine.”

Gritting her teeth, Chelsea wondered what would happen if she told Emily to mind her own damned business. On second thought, she knew what would happen. Emily would scoff and brush her off, and then wheedle until Chelsea eventually gave in. It was a well-known fact within the hallowed halls of Black Knights Inc. that Emily Scott had only a passing familiarity with the word privacy. Nosiness was just her nature.

Having no energy to withstand any wheedling—and still feeling drained and strangely disappointed by the way things had ended belowdecks—Chelsea admitted, “Yup. We did some…”

She racked her brain for the right words to describe the wonder of being in Dagan’s arms. “Adult things,” she finally finished, wrinkling her nose because lame-oh!

Turning back toward the railing, Chelsea concentrated on watching the coastline whiz by. Brick houses with white dormers came into view to the south. A gray stone building clung to the side of a hill, its tall, pitched corners giving it a vague castle-like feel.

The town of Folkestone.

If she craned her head around, she could see the long arm of the pier jutting out into the Channel. It was crooked as a dog’s hind leg, a monstrosity of human construction that looked eerily out of place amid the brown and green vegetation of the countryside, the soft gray waves that lapped at its base, and the cheery English town at its back.

Her heart fluttered against her ribs. Tipping her chin back, she peered through the window into the wheelhouse. The BKI boys were down on their knees, taking off their shoes and socks and stuffing them into the two waterproof float bags Rusty had graciously given them.

Chivalry at its finest, she thought as she watched Dagan slip her backpack into the float bag he would carry.

Turning back, she saw Emily eyeing her. “What?”

“So what happened after you did adult things?”

Sounded as lame coming out of Emily’s mouth as it had coming out of Chelsea’s.

Before Chelsea could answer, Emily drew her own conclusions. “Oh no!” She lifted her hand to her mouth. “Did it take a weird turn? Does he have dragon breath?” A look of horror came over Emily’s face. “Is he one of those guys who tries to touch your tonsils with his tongue? He is, isn’t he? Oh, gross!”

“First of all,” Chelsea said exasperatedly, “he doesn’t have dragon breath. Second of all, it didn’t take a weird turn, and he sure as shit didn’t do that torpedo-tongue thing you’re talking about. Just the opposite, it was… He was…” What? What was he? There weren’t enough words in the English language to describe the glory of his kiss, the splendor of his unapologetic bump and grind. “Wonderful,” she finally finished.

Too wonderful. She was ruined for all other men.

“So then what’s the problem?” Emily’s brow furrowed. “Why are you both acting funky around each other now?”

“We aren’t.”

“Ahem.” Emily held up a hand. “In case it escaped your notice, while Rusty was laying out this plan, you and Zoelner didn’t get up to your usual shenanigans. Zoelner didn’t say one word about you not being cut out for this kind of stuff. And you didn’t once tell him to shove a sock in it. In fact, it was nothing but crickets and tumbleweeds from the both of you.”

Chelsea shot Emily a dirty look for being right. Then she admitted, “The problem is we want different things in life.”

“Psshh.” Emily rolled her eyes. “Don’t we all? Compromise, baby. Isn’t that what couples do?”

“Z and I are far from a couple.” Chelsea did her best to ignore the ache that sad truth started somewhere in the vicinity of her breastbone. Figuring the only way out of the conversation was to turn the tables—and needing a distraction from thoughts of what she was about to do—she said, “But enough about me and Z. I want to know what’s up with you and Christian.”

Emily’s expression shuttered like someone had drawn a set of blackout shades over her face. “Why does everyone assume something is up with us? Can’t we just be coworkers who like to give each other crap? Does it have to be more than that?”

Chelsea sniffed the breeze. “Is that the scent of bullshit I smell?”

Emily’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh, come on now.” Chelsea shook her head. “Are you really sitting there trying to convince me you don’t think Christian is hot?”

“Of course I think he’s hot. How could I not? I got eyeballs, don’t I?” When Emily got worked up, she whipped out her South Side ’hood girl grammar.

“So what’s the problem?” Chelsea shot Emily’s earlier words back at her.

“The problem is it’d turn into more than just a little wham-bam, thank you, man. I know from experience. I tried once before to have a thing with a coworker, and…” She curled her upper lip. “It blew up in my face. All that forced togetherness, all those shared experiences and mutual friends? Yeah, I suppose it was inevitable that he started to want more than the occasional desktop diddle.”

“And you…didn’t want more?” Chelsea prompted.

“Hell no.” Emily made a scoffing sound, but Chelsea thought she detected something wistful in Emily’s eyes. “For me, men are only good for recreational purposes. And since that’s the case, I’ve learned not to shit where I eat. When it comes to coworkers, I’m on a strict man cleanse.” Chelsea opened her mouth to demand more details, but Emily lifted a hand. “That’s enough show-and-tell for now, don’t you think?”

Chelsea harrumphed. The sound caught in the wind and melded with the growl and grumble of the churning twin engines. “Have you ever noticed you have no issue sticking your nose in other people’s business, but the instant someone tries to get the four-one-one on you, you close up tighter than a clamshell? It’s enough to make a preacher cuss.”

Emily’s grin was unapologetic as she gathered her dark, rioting hair into a ponytail. “And it’s one of my better qualities, don’t you think? Speaking of sticking my nose in other people’s business, let’s get back to you and Zoelner.”

Chelsea groaned. “Nope.” She adamantly shook her head. “Just hold that thought forever.”

Emily feigned a pout. “Despite my current lack of a sex life and my utter lack of interest in a love life”—there was that odd, wistful look again—“you should know that neither of those things affects my judgment when it comes to matters of the heart for other people. I’ve been told I give excellent relationship advice.”

Rusty was slowing the boat, which meant they were getting close to their destination. Chelsea’s stomach clenched into a fist. “Would it offend you terribly if I said that right now I want your two cents about as much as I want a third nipple?”

“Who wouldn’t want a third nipple?” Emily blinked in mock confusion. “I mean, you’d up your pleasure ante by fifty percent. Plus, a man has two hands and a mouth, so…” She let the sentence dangle.

Chelsea laughed. The two of them had become friends in the time Emily had worked for BKI, and Chelsea was going to miss Emily’s boundless enthusiasm and no-holds-barred way of expressing herself once they finished this mission.

In fact, she was going to miss a lot once the boys and girls of Black Knights Inc. officially became civilians and she went back to piloting a desk at Langley. Like the smell of metal grinding as the Knights built the custom bikes that acted as their cover. Like the way they all teased and tormented one another, but when push came to shove, they banded together like family. But most of all, she was going to miss…Dagan.

It was as if the thought of him conjured him to life. He, Christian, and Ace crouch-walked out of the wheelhouse. The Border Agency cutter was still a good two miles behind them. Only if someone was out on her deck with powerful binoculars would they be able to see anyone aboard the catamaran. Still, no one was taking any chances.

Even all hunched over, Chelsea felt the impact of Dagan hit her smack in the solar plexus. She was mesmerized by the breadth of his shoulders and the way the wind caught his dark hair and ran loving fingers through the silken strands. He was a man who had danced with the Reaper and come out the winner, and it showed in the certainty of his movements, each one a lesson in economical grace.

“You ready for this?” His moonshine voice cut through the noise of the wind and waves as easily as a knife cut through her mother’s famous flaky crab cakes. That was one thing they hadn’t had to give up after her father’s death when money became tight. The crab pots her father had left behind assured them that come crab season, they were well fed. “Anything I can do to help?” he finished.

Okay, so Emily was right. Before that scene down in the hold, Dagan wouldn’t have asked, You ready for this? or Anything I can do to help? He would have grumpily informed her that she wasn’t ready for this, and then he would have outlined exactly what he was going to do to help her.

Everything had changed between them.

And, oh! The irony!

For years, she’d wanted him to treat her like an equal, like an agent who knew what she was doing. Now that he finally was, she wanted things to go back to the way they were before. When they had snapped and snarled, poked and prodded. That had felt right. But this? Yeah. No.

Of course, she couldn’t tell him that. Instead, she forced a wry grin, added a saucy wink, and gave him one of her daddy’s Southern-fried favorites. “Am I ready for this? Does a farm dog have fleas?”

Rusty had managed to keep a good distance between his catamaran and the cutter. But he had assured them that wouldn’t last for long, not nearly long enough for them to sail back to Dover, and then dock and unload before the Border Agency ship was on top of them. Instead, he had turned them south, piloting them full steam toward Folkestone, the town he had called home since moving to England.

“There’s a long pier that juts way out into the water. It’s called the Folkestone Harbor Arm,” he had said, outlining his plan. “I can sail behind it, and you can all hop overboard. It’s perfect because while we’re back there, we’ll be out of the cutter’s line of sight.”

Sounded easy, right?

Wrong.

Turned out, the pier was a massive construction that didn’t have anywhere for a small boat the size of Rusty’s catamaran to pull up to. Which meant they were going to have to swim.

Now, usually swimming wasn’t a problem for Chelsea. Liquid locomotion was something she had mastered at the precocious age of three. But that had been in late June in the creek running behind her house with her father looking on. What Rusty proposed was a dunking in the freezing cold waters of the Channel in late March. And as if that weren’t enough, they were supposed to use the pier’s pilings as cover against any curious onlookers while battling the waves and the current on their way to shore.

When Rusty had told them that part of the plan, he had taken one look at the disbelief on her face and pointed a finger at her nose. “And see,” he’d said. “That’s why this plan is perfect. Those Border Agency boys won’t think for one minute anyone would have the cojones to hop into the Channel right now. So when I sail back to Dover and dock, and they find nothing but little ol’ me, they won’t be the least bit suspicious.”

Good. Great, Chelsea had thought. Unless, of course, we all drown.

“Is there nowhere else you could drop us ashore?” she had asked.

“The coastline around here is pretty straight and barren.” The look Rusty had given her was sympathetic. “Our only hope for a few minutes of cover is the Folkestone Harbor Arm.”

The massive shadow of that very thing suddenly loomed over the catamaran, dragging her back to the present. There was a lighthouse at the end of the pier. It towered above them as they made their way to the opposite side. She couldn’t shake the sensation that it was a giant smirking down at them, laughing at the audacity of their plan.

Fee-fi-fo-fum, she imagined it chuckled. I smell the blood of Americans.

The waves gently rocked the vessel as Rusty sailed the boat closer to shore. He turned the catamaran suddenly, darting between the harbor arm’s leggy pilings. Ten seconds later, he cut the engines and ducked through the wheelhouse door, then ran to the bow of the boat and tied a rope from the catamaran to a huge, rusted metal loop on one piling. After the boat was secure, he joined them on the far side of the wheelhouse.

“Everybody ready to get wet and wild?” he asked, surveying the scene around the boat. “I noticed the pier is empty. I was hoping that’d be the case.”

Right. Because March wasn’t a month for tourists, and the day had turned too cold and windy for the local folks to latch on to the idea of an afternoon walk onto the unprotected Folkestone Harbor Arm. However, the five of them? Yup, they were about to jump in for a swim.

Holy Moses. Had Chelsea been Catholic, she would have crossed herself.

“I’ve sailed us as close to shore as I dare.” Rusty glanced over his shoulder at the shoreline that looked to Chelsea to be about ten thousand miles away, through choppy waves and deep, dark shadows. The shade of the harbor arm turned what was already a cloudy day into full-on twilight. And the sound of the current pulling and pushing at the pilings created an eerie echo. “Thirty yards. Piece of cake.” Rusty nodded.

“Says the only one of us not about to swim it,” Chelsea grumbled, pulling off her boots and socks and handing them to Dagan to add to the waterproof bag. Her coat came next. The minute she shrugged out of it, she felt the bite of the breeze and refused to consider just how much harsher the bite of the water would be.

Watching Dagan shove her things into the army-green float bag, she wiggled her toes against the damp deck. Emily gave her socks, shoes, and coat to Christian to add to the second waterproof bag. Once they made it to shore, they would want to have dry things to change into.

If we make it to shore, Chelsea thought with uncharacteristic pessimism.

When they were ready, Rusty reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He handed them to Ace. “You remember the address I gave you?”

“Number Six London Street.” Ace nodded.

“Home sweet home.”

The two men eyed each other for just a second too long. Chelsea lifted a brow when Ace turned away, a slight blush on his cheeks.

Well, what do you know.

Clearing his throat, Rusty once again looked toward the shore. “There’s food in the fridge, dry clothes in the closet upstairs if you need some, and if you hang your wet things over the radiators, they’ll be dry in a couple of hours. I’ll meet you back there this evening.”

“Thank you, Rusty.” Emily laid a hand atop Rusty’s rubber boot.

If Chelsea wasn’t mistaken, Christian cursed under his breath. She felt like whacking him upside the head and telling him to open his dadgummed eyes. He was a covert operator trained in the fine art of observation. Or at least he was supposed to be.

“My pleasure,” Rusty told her. “Been a while since I’ve had this much excitement. Now get moving. All of you.”

Dagan was still wearing that look Chelsea couldn’t quite read. When he searched her face, she hoped she was doing a good job of hiding the dread and fear in her eyes. She realized she wasn’t when he placed a comforting hand at the small of her back and leaned in to whisper, “You got this.”

“Of course I do.” She gnawed worriedly at her bottom lip.

His eyes focused on her mouth, and memories of all they’d done in the catamaran’s hold filled the space between them. Even beneath the harbor arm, the wind played with Dagan’s hair, tousling it around his head. It might have made him look boyish. You know, if it weren’t for the Beard.

That thing was all man. All rough and tumble and deliciously abrasive when he kissed her lips and nuzzled her cheeks.

How good would it feel brushing against the insides of my thighs?

As soon as she had the thought, she willfully beat it back.

Fixing her mind on the task at hand, she scooted to the edge of the catamaran and poked her head between the rails. Below, the silvery waves lapped hungrily at the hull of the boat. Soon, they would be lapping hungrily at her.

She had the distinct urge to kick herself for not letting Dagan have his way with her earlier. Death from multiple screaming orgasms sounded so much nicer than death by drowning in the friggin’ English Channel.