Eleven

Annie wasn’t sure whether it was shock or awe that kept her quiet as the captain piloted the small eight-person inflatable away from the dive boat.

The last few hours had been eventful, to say the least. She’d found explosives, learned that not only was her boyfriend a terrorist but he was also planning to embroil her in his madness, had a gun pulled on her by his mentor—who seemed to have no hesitation about the prospect of putting a bullet in her head—and narrowly escaped it all, thanks to the man beside her.

Although “narrowly” probably wasn’t the right word for what she’d just witnessed. Thus the “awe” part.

She’d never seen anything like it—except maybe in movies or on TV. Dan—whoever he was—had eliminated the threat with methodical, cold efficiency. He’d moved so fast. One instant he’d been next to her; the next he’d snapped the plastic ties around his wrists as if they were paper and had his hands on Julien’s arm with the gun—she cringed, still hearing that sickening crack in her head as Julien’s arm had broken—and with a few more well-aimed blows the two men were out cold.

How long had it taken, thirty seconds? A minute at most? A few minutes more to take out the bigger threat of Jean Paul? It had looked like the extreme fighting mixed with martial arts that she’d seen on TV, although it was much more scary-looking in real life.

She eyed him from under the brim of his borrowed cap as he stood at the wheel of the inflatable’s helm station. She was seated next to him on one of the plastic bench seats. They were headed into the wind, and he was pushing the twenty-horsepower engine as much as he could to put as much distance between them and the boat as possible. The lift and slam of the inflatable going over the waves didn’t seem to bother him—nor did the spray beating into his face. He looked utterly in control with the same granite expression on his face. Actually, if she thought he was capable, she would think he was having fun—in his element, so to speak.

She on the other hand was struggling not to fly out of the boat, felt her teeth banging and bones rattling from every slam, and couldn’t feel her face.

Who was this guy? He wouldn’t hear her now if she asked him, but part of her wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Finally, when they’d gone about thirty minutes and the dive boat had long disappeared behind them, he slowed the engine.

She looked around, hoping to see some kind of identifying landmark, but all around them were darkening skies, thickening mist, and the endless dark grayish blue swells of the ocean.

What were they, maybe fifty miles off the northeast coast of Lewis?

The middle of nowhere. It was ocean and stormy skies for as far as the eye could see. Alone.

Her heart skipped a few beats.

She eyed him again, realizing how much trust she’d put in him by just getting in the boat. Out here all alone like this probably wasn’t the best time to be hoping that hadn’t been a mistake. He could toss her overboard with no one the wiser.

Her skipping heartbeat stuttered to a stop. God, why had she thought that?

The boat stopped—or rather idled as the engine was still on.

Cue the dramatic movie music.

“Wh-why are we stopping?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound as nervous as she felt.

He ignored her question, which in her limited experience wasn’t unusual for him. “Do you have anything electronic with you?”

She frowned, not sure what he meant. As he hadn’t let her fetch her bag, all she had was what she carried in her pockets—her phone and her watch, which was an old Mickey Mouse one that she’d had since childhood. She felt around in her jeans. Oh yeah, and some lip balm and a few tissues.

She didn’t even have her passport. Her mom had bought her one of those waist belts to travel with, but she’d hated it and stuck it in her suitcase as soon as they arrived from the airport.

“Keep it with you at all times.” She would happily tell her mother she was right just as soon as she got out of this.

“Just my phone,” she said.

“Let me see it.”

Figuring he was going to call someone, she pulled it out of her pocket and handed it to him—nearly going overboard after it when he immediately tossed it over the side.

Her attempt to reach for it, however, proved futile, and it disappeared beneath the waves forever.

Outrage made her forget that she should be terrified. She spun around on him. “Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t want anyone tracking us.”

“You could have just turned it off.”

“That isn’t a fail-safe.”

“I highly doubt Jean Paul and his friends are that sophisticated.”

“But the police might be. I’m not taking any chances—and OPF is a powerful organization. Don’t underestimate them.”

“How do you know so much about them?”

He didn’t answer, instead pulling a radio out of his bag.

“What about your cell phone?” she asked. “Is yours going overboard, too?”

“Mine’s a burner and untraceable.”

Great. That wasn’t what she needed to hear. Why did he have an untraceable cell phone? Weren’t those the province of drug dealers and other criminals? What was this guy involved in?

She didn’t have a chance to ask him, as he was on the radio—channel 16 was the international distress channel—already giving the “urgent” signal of “Pan-Pan.”

Mayday might have been appropriate under the circumstances—the situation was grave and imminent to her mind—but he was obviously taking a more rational, less terrified-out-of-his-mind perspective.

It took a few minutes for a response. The fact that they were in the range of a boat or coast guard station was some small relief. Not that five to twenty miles was going to help her much if he decided to get rid of her.

She’d definitely watched too many movies.

The captain was quick and to the point. He gave the name of the boat, the last known coordinates, that there were three ecoterrorists who’d planned to blow up the drillship waiting for them, and told them “not to miss the explosives in the equipment cases in the storage room.”

The long pause made Annie wonder whether the transmission had been lost. But the coast guard operator repeated what Dan had said and asked him to confirm. He did, but as soon as they asked him to identify himself and his position, Dan stopped them. “You better hurry. They’re tied up and one of them is injured.”

He turned off the radio, which she took to mean that he considered his duty done.

Still upset about her phone—it was new and not cheap—she said, “Doesn’t that one magically turn on, too?”

He made a gruff sound that she thought might be of amusement. She was certain of it when one side of his mouth curved. “Nope. No way to track it if it’s off. I just brought the old radio—no GPS. I also didn’t bring the sat EPIRB.”

In other words, no satellite beacon to let someone track them down. Not necessarily what she wanted to hear. What if they got in some kind of . . . predicament?

“I hope you know where you are going.”

He laughed for real this time. It was kind of charming. But not as charming as when his steel blue eyes met hers and twinkled. That kind of charming caused her heart to forget to beat.

God, he was good-looking. She almost didn’t want him to shave the stupid beard anymore. It might be too much to take.

“Don’t worry. I won’t get us lost.”

“What, are you some kind of expert navigator?”

“Something like that.”

She looked up. “I don’t see a lot of stars around.”

He nodded toward his bag, which he’d pulled out of the dry storage box. “I have a compass and the boat’s navigation maps. We’ll be fine.”

She must not have looked convinced.

“You don’t believe me?”

This time it was her turn not to answer. Her eye had caught on something. The plastic handle she’d been holding on to had pulled away from the boat, and one of the seams had started to split. “Look at this,” she said.

Dan glanced over and swore. He moved over from the helm to inspect it. “Whoever rented this boat to your friends”—seeing her expression, he corrected—“your former friends didn’t inspect it very well. This entire seam wasn’t glued correctly.”

“Is it leaking?” Annie asked warily.

“Not yet. I have some duct tape, but I’m not sure how long it will hold.”

Great. Just what she wanted to hear. “You carry duct tape with you?”

What psychopath didn’t have that in his torture bag?

“Not usually, but I had a tear in my bag and needed to improvise.” He reached down into the backpack and retrieved the tape, letting her see the patch he’d done on the bottom.

He gave her a sidelong look as he worked. “You don’t have to look so nervous. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Embarrassed at being caught out, she blushed. “You might be right. But let’s just say my judgment in men has taken a beating the past couple of days.” Not to mention that he’d lied to her about not being American and clearly didn’t want a run-in with the police. But, even though she hadn’t forgotten how Mr. No Sugarcoat had torn into her a while ago—some of which was admittedly deserved—and then had tried to abandon her, she owed him her life. “I’m sorry. After all that you’ve done I should be thanking you. I’m grateful—truly I am.”

He nodded, turning back to the repair work as if her gratitude made him uncomfortable. When he was done, he sat back and looked at her. “You don’t have anything to worry about, Annie—I’m harmless.”

She blurted a nervous laugh. “Right. I saw exactly how harmless you are a little while ago. How did you learn to do that?”

He frowned, all signs of amusement vanishing. “They deserved worse. When he held that gun to your head . . .”

He stopped, and she wondered what he was going to say. Had he been more affected by the strange connection she’d sensed between them than he let on?

Maybe so. She sucked in her breath as he reached across to swipe a few windblown hairs from her cheek, letting his fingers linger on her face.

There was a softness in his eyes she’d never seen before and a huskiness to his voice when he spoke. When they were combined with that sexy drawl, she had to admit it made her feel a little tingly in areas that she shouldn’t be thinking about right now. “You are safe as long as you are with me.”

She wasn’t sure that was true. The way her heart was beating in her throat didn’t feel very safe at all. It felt dangerous. It felt intense and a little scary. It felt as if she were on the edge of a precipice about to jump with nothing to catch her.

This man could hurt her, all right, although not in the way she’d been imagining.

Physically, at least, she knew she could believe him: he would keep her safe.

He leaned forward and just for a moment she thought he might kiss her. She was surprised to realize how much she wanted him to, and how disappointed she was when he dropped his hand instead.

It was so sudden that she wondered if maybe the moment had been too much for him as well.

“The tape won’t last forever—especially in the rain.” He indicated the skies that looked a few minutes away from unleashing. “We need to find somewhere to put in and wait it out.”

Opening one of the maps, he studied it for a moment and seemed to be doing a few calculations in his head. “We should be around here.” He pointed to an area on the map. “There should be a small archipelago about eight miles to our southwest.”

Eight miles was a long way to go in a storm-frenzied ocean in an inflatable. As the waves rose their speed would have to lower, especially as there were just two of them in the boat. On flat water, this boat would probably go twenty to twenty-five miles an hour, but in a storm they would have to be much more careful and be lucky to go a quarter of that.

“Will we make it?”

He grinned. “No problem. Even if I have to swim us there.”

He was joking. At least she thought he was joking.

“I’d rather not have to test out this life jacket or ruin what I have left of my wardrobe,” Annie said dryly. “I’ve already lost a phone today.”

He chuckled. “Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

She was, too. And when the first drop of rain landed on her nose a few minutes later, she suspected she was going to need it.

•   •   •

Dean was glad she wasn’t looking at him as if he was a serial killer anymore, but the trust in her eyes didn’t sit much better.

The leak bothered him more than he wanted to let on, and the storm was going to complicate things. If the clouds and wind were any indication, the weather was coming in a lot faster and heavier than the forecasts predicted. Hardly unusual in Scotland but not great timing for them.

He also didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had no idea what they’d find when they reached the archipelago. For all he knew they were a couple of sea stacks with no place to land unless you were a bird.

But he wasn’t going to worry about what he couldn’t control. One step at a time.

A bad seam. He shook his head. It wasn’t common, but it happened. It was shit luck to have the first time it happened to him be in the middle of the North Sea in a storm. They were, however, fortunate that she’d noticed it before it had fully broken apart and the rain had started. Getting the tape to stick when it was wet would have taken a miracle.

These boats were built to stay afloat for a while if one of the tubes lost air, but he wouldn’t want to put it to a test in a storm. Water was already sloshing in from the waves, and it was bound to get worse.

He’d been forced to ditch most of his gear in Russia. After the LC had dragged him back from where the explosion had thrown him and rendered him unconscious, they’d tossed all their gear—anything that might enable someone to track or ID them—into the fire. But Dean had replaced many of the items in his E&E (escape and evade) survival kit—SEALs didn’t leave home without ’em—including the duct tape that had made Annie so nervous and a compass.

He preferred a full-sized military compass to the button-sized one that was standard issue in his kit. Good thing, as not only was it much more accurate, but it was also waterproof. A fixed marine compass with the lubber’s line aligned would have been better, but he would make adjustments. Besides, at this point beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Dean was so focused on navigating the boat he didn’t realize it had begun to rain until Annie shivered.

He swore, realizing her jacket—although down—wasn’t waterproof. Of course, one of the things he hadn’t replaced in his kit was the emergency Mylar blanket. “Here,” he said, starting to unzip his waterproof shell while holding the wheel with the other. “Take this.”

She shook her head and stopped him with her hand on his arm. “I’m not taking your jacket. You need it more than I do. Besides,” she added with a smile, “what kind of card-carrying member of NOW would I be if I let you do that?”

“A dry one,” he quipped. She laughed, and he looked at her sideways. “Let me guess. You have all kinds of cards in your wallet.”

She was the type to put her money where her mouth was. Or maybe he should say where her heart was.

She grinned—a little too happily to his mind—and started rattling off every bleeding-heart, save-the-whales type of organization he could think of and some he’d never heard of.

But he held up his hand when she got to the political ones. “Stop. I can’t take it anymore. You had me at that last one.” He gave a dramatic shudder.

“They do a lot of important things—”

“Annie?”

She paused to look up at him. The brim of his hat had kept most of the rain off her face, but one or two drops had caught in her lashes. Her eyes were gorgeous—especially when they were sparkling with amusement. “I’ll keep the jacket if you promise to stop.”

She smiled as if that had been her intention all along. “Deal.” It was her turn to look at him sideways. “Let me guess. . . .”

He grinned. She didn’t even need to say it. “Cold, dead hands, baby.” He sobered. “‘Baby’ in the nonmisogynistic sense of the word.”

“Obviously,” she deadpanned back at him. “Although I’m surprised that they teach that word in caveman school.”

He gave a sharp bark of laughter. He’d never met a woman who gave him shit the way she did. “Yeah, it was in the words-over-four-letters class, right between Dragging by the Hair 101 and Patriarchal Society 200.”

She threw back her head and laughed, which stopped his jesting cold. It was replaced by a hard bolt of lust. Lust that despite the weather and their precarious situation made him hot and about a half second away from pulling her into his arms and putting his mouth on that very tempting, creamy-looking throat. Which would be a really bad idea.

That he could lose focus in a situation like this, even for a moment, was disconcerting enough to snap him back to attention. Situational awareness on an op was something he’d never lost sight of before.

He didn’t like it.

Having no idea of the effect she’d just had on him, she lifted her head to meet his gaze, still smiling. “Let me guess. You excelled in all your subjects?”

“Enough to teach you a few things if you are interested.”

“I think I’ll pass,” she said dryly.

“You don’t know what you are missing.”

She rolled her eyes. “I can guess.”

He wondered if they were talking about the same thing. If they were, she had no fucking idea. “Let me know if you want a rain check.”

“I’ll do that.”

He had to force himself to look away. She was so beautiful he was getting distracted again.

He lasted about a mile. That was the point when the drops of mist turned into full-fledged rain. Sexist pig or not, he wasn’t going to sit here with a coat on that was keeping him dry while she got soaked.

He thought about pulling her into his lap and not giving her a chance to argue, but as that might be seen as coming a little too close to the pig part of the equation, he decided to take a more subtle route. There was a first time for everything. “I need you to help me with something.”

She sat up. “Of course. Anything.”

“I can’t keep the compass steady, hold the map, and steer the boat with the waves like this.”

“What do you need me to do?”

He scooted back a little on the seat. “Come sit here.” Said the spider to the fly. He motioned in front of him. “You can hold the map and the compass where I can see it, while I steer.”

She frowned as if wondering whether she should be suspicious.

As MacDonald would say, smart lass.

Dean had to slow the speed, and it took a little jostling, but a few minutes later she was tucked against his chest, and his coat was discreetly pulled around her, shielding her from most of the rain.

There was one big problem—a problem that was getting bigger and bigger by the moment. The plastic seat in front of the helm could be adjusted, but not enough to give their bodies any space between them. Which essentially meant that her back was pressed against his chest, her head was tucked under his chin, and her firm, perfectly curved ass was nestled right into his crotch, and with every bump of the boat, that very incredible bottom was slamming against him. His dick—the brainless, too-long-ignored idiot that it was—was taking notice and standing hard at attention. Emphasis on hard.

There was too much of him and too little between them, namely a couple of layers of denim, for her not to notice.

She tried to sit stiffly for a while, keeping as much distance between them as possible. But as the weather grew worse, and the waves higher, it became impossible. She gave up, sinking into him fully.

It took everything he had not to groan. But she felt good. Really good. Body-on-fire, skin-too-tight, every-instinct-flared good.

For the next half hour, he had to fight to keep them on course while struggling to ignore the havoc the motion and rhythm of the boat were wreaking on his control.

The warmth and softness of her body didn’t help. Nor did the fact that she smelled incredible. Perfume? Shampoo? He didn’t know, but it was feminine, sweet, and made him want to bury his face in her neck and hair.

He was almost glad when the weather got worse and required his full attention.

Almost.