Amber smacked the dough on the table with the palm of her hand, sending puffs of flour upward. Nothing from Hawk for two days. No phone signal. She had checked the instant messenger program. Even had it on at night, just in case. Nothing. She folded in the dough and started to knead it, pressing down with her thumbs. Where the hell was he?
She made a face. He could have contacted her somehow. Even Dija, the mercenary he had helped, had gotten hold of Lily to report that he was safe. It was through Lily that she had an idea of what had happened during the firefight the other day.
She had sat listening in on Lily’s speakerphone as Dija gave an account of how a man with dark hair and weird golden eyes had saved him from Dilaver’s men. It was full of macho talk. He and the stranger against a dozen, all wielding weapons. He and the stranger engaging in a tough knife battle that was fiercely fought in the dark. And how he and the same man had circled back and stalked the enemy, giving all of them what they deserved, and cutting off—
It was at this point that Lily had leaned forward and cut off the communication. Obviously the man was full of it. Hawk would never have killed so many and risked Dilaver’s wrath. Dija was, Lily said with a dry smile, a very good embellisher of stories. He was lucky to be alive, and from the sound of it, Hawk was responsible for that fact.
“I’ll get the real details when I see him on the way back with the girls,” Lily had added. “He was just drunk. They all get drunk after a battle.”
Amber frowned, her hands automatically molding and kneading the dough. Hawk could have called her. Was he in another battle? Had Dilaver found out and…. After all, it was a risky thing she had asked him to do. Worry niggled at her, and she paused in the middle of her task to wonder at why she would feel that way about someone she barely knew.
It was more than just a sense of responsibility in case he had been caught. She hadn’t been able to sleep well the past two nights, waking up several times just to go check a blank computer screen. That didn’t have to do with guilt or responsibility. It was worry, and now it worried her that she was doing it.
As if she needed more on her mind. She had enough to contend with, what with the secret interview with the girls set up by Brad with some international reporter. The reporter wanted to bring two more people with him, a cameraman and a doctor, and Lily had insisted that the doctor be from out of town. Amber had agreed with her. Anyone local could betray locations as well as identities, and the owner of The Last Resort was well known.
This interview was going to be a huge risk to her and Lily. The reporter had agreed that none of their identities would be revealed in any form of media, but one just never knew. Brad had given him fake identities just to be on the safe side, but how difficult was it to trace Brad, the head of CIVPOL, to her?
And there was Lily and Brad. Amber shook her head as she rolled the dough into a long tube, then shook a couple handfuls of flour onto the table. She slowly glided the tube over it, lightly patting the flour onto the mixture. Those two were her friends, and something had happened between them during that dinner date. Now they were acting like two mountain cats with heartburn.
Lily was probably nervous about the coming interview. Well, Amber was, too, but she didn’t go around trying to bite Brad’s head off whenever he asked her about the preparations. Brad, on the other hand, was mad about something else entirely. After one of their sharp exchanges, she would catch him standing back, hands in pockets, that brooding stare studying Lily’s every move as her friend pretended not to notice.
Amber told herself it was none of her business. Usually she would play the peacekeeper, but this time there was a tension that wasn’t there before. She absentmindedly pinched the bridge of her nose. Brad would be here later. She was determined to pull Lily out of wherever she was hiding and get the three of them up in her dining room to talk without—
The outside connecting door to the kitchen opened. Thinking it was Lily, Amber didn’t look up immediately.
“I was just thinking about you,” she said, pinching off dollops of the dough.
“Nice thoughts, I hope,” a male voice answered.
Her gaze swung upward in startled surprise. Hawk stood at the doorway, his eyes that odd glittering color that reminded her of a wild animal. He looked like one, too, his clothes rumpled and stained, his handsome face dusty, covered by several days’ stubble. There was something dangerous about him. Amber straightened from the table. Why was her heart bursting into a smile at the sight of him?
“Don’t you ever knock?” she asked. It wasn’t opening hours yet. Locks, it seemed, weren’t much of an obstacle for him.
He sauntered in slowly, his gaze traveling from her face down to her floury fingers sticky with cookie dough. She was suddenly very aware of how civilized her surroundings were compared to what he must have been in the last few days.
He stopped in front of her. “Ja sam gladna,” he said softly.
“Want something to eat?” she asked, conscious of the way he was looking at her, as if he were hungry for something else.
“Yes.”
She indicated a nearby chair. He sat and watched as she put away the dough and cleared the table. “Are you all right? You’ve been away for a few days.” She patted the right side of her face, near the jawline. “There’s a cut there…I think. You’d better take care of that. It’s caked with dirt.”
“Later.”
She poured a cup of coffee from the carafe. “Cream and sugar?”
“No.”
“Anything particular for food?”
His eyes gleamed and his teeth were very white against his tanned face. She wouldn’t quite classify that as a smile. He didn’t answer, either. The man was obviously not in the mood to talk right now. Another side of him. Where was all that sexy bantering?
She went into the huge refrigerated pantry that kept all the restaurant food and took out anything that would heat up quickly. She glanced back at Hawk now and then and found him watching her with half-closed eyes. She was used to men looking at her—having grown up as the blond, blue-eyed missionary’s daughter, she had been in countries where her coloring attracted all kinds of attention. Her parents had taught her to treat it like background music, sometimes noticeable, sometimes slightly uncomfortable.
The man sitting there with that intense look in his eyes couldn’t be ignored like background anything. He was too still. Too alive. Too damn sexy sitting there like a wild animal in her spic-and-span kitchen.
And too dangerous to ignore.
Hawk knew he shouldn’t be here. Not in his current mood. But he couldn’t help himself. He was drawn here as he was to his own sanctuary, his little private place on the island back home. And he wasn’t quite sure why.
His island getaway off Florida was perfect when he felt like this—a little wild, a little melancholy, the need to connect to nature in its most natural setting, without battles and strategy planned ahead by humans. He could sit for hours playing with his fishing nets and going out to sea pretending to be Captain Ahab or the Old Man. Hours and hours of just sitting there enjoying the nothingness of contemplation, his mind at rest.
But he had a fierce need tonight, after two days of going to battle for…nothing. He had never fought for a side he didn’t choose before, nor had he ever killed just for the sake of killing. It had left a hole inside him, one that seemed to be tearing wider. He wasn’t sure why, but the thought of Amber in her kitchen was on his mind.
He didn’t want to talk to her on the phone or on the instant message program; he wanted to see her. So he had asked Dilaver to drop him off here when they were heading back into town.
“Doing your own celebration, Hawk, eh?” Dilaver had chuckled with a wink.
Hawk didn’t feel the need to point out that there was nothing for him to celebrate. The only good thing he had done on this trip was to save that widow and her daughter, who had been hiding under the kitchen sink, from being used by the bastards. No one had dared pick up his challenge of a fight, not when they’d seen Dilaver warningly smack the young thug who had carelessly shrugged off the deaths of two of their gang. He had hoped for some outlet to the rage inside.
Worse, after that night, they had gone off to raid a rival encampment in a small village town, one not endorsed by the KLA. Dilaver was, after all, one of the KLA’s own, and those illegal weapons Hawk had seen went right into their hands. That was what he was fighting for, Hawk told himself—to get hold of the one weapon that must not fall into enemy hands.
The battle had been bloody. As he was with Dilaver most of the time, Hawk had to be part of the fighting in a real way. The other side was no better than this side, he had told himself. But he couldn’t help thinking what if it happened to be his SEAL brothers, and he was still undercover? What would he do then? Such thoughts were dangerous in the heat of battle, and he had cut them off almost as soon as they surfaced and had gone into combat mode.
At the end of the day, Dilaver had captured his enemies and as a warning, chopped everyone’s middle finger off. And that was it. That was the fucking point of the battle—to chop off everyone’s middle finger.
Driving back into town, with all the noisy aftermath of men high on adrenaline, all Hawk could think about was Amber and hamburgers. He wasn’t a man who questioned his own private needs. He knew where to find both, and he went for them.
And she had been in the kitchen, looking so damn good, he had wanted to cross the room and take her on the kitchen table right then and there. There were smudges of flour on her nose and chin; her fingers looked sexily edible as he watched her knead and roll dough, a little frown on her forehead as if she were thinking unpleasant thoughts.
Something dark and wanting arose in him. The feeling fed that hole inside, a fire in his gut. His whole focus was on the woman and he had to concentrate hard on what she was saying because there was a roar in his head drowning out all superfluous noise except for what his body and mind hungered for.
Here was a woman who wasn’t captured, or underage, or begging for help. Here was someone who had cried outside the way he had cried inside at the sight of those girls being gang-raped. Here was someone he’d had to talk out of doing something that he had wanted to do for the last few months; he couldn’t forget the sight of her dangling on the side of the building with that weapon aimed at the crowd of men. There had been just enough light to see her expression as she willed herself to pull the trigger, one so fierce and sorrowful that he had wanted to hold her in his arms and comfort her, as he needed to be held and be comforted inside. Because he had understood what she was feeling and going through.
Food. She thought that was what he wanted. He waited till she placed the dishes on the table, then grabbed her by the arm. She landed on his lap without resistance. He began devouring her lips.
She was warm and soft, her lips opening willingly for his exploration. He pushed his tongue inside her mouth, tasting her. He couldn’t get enough, putting his hand behind her neck and pulling her even closer.
He reached up with his other hand, caressing her jawline, her neck, then downward, until he cupped her breast. She jerked forward, a soft sound in her throat, as he ran a thumb across the thin material covering her nipple. She wasn’t wearing a bra. He pulled at the shirt impatiently, trying to find an opening to get what he wanted.
Her hands stopped his progress. “Hawk,” she whispered. “People can come into my work kitchen.”
“I don’t care. I want you now. Here, on this table. Upstairs. Somewhere, Amber. Take your pick.” His hand was still on her breast and he used his thumb to his advantage. He didn’t wait for her answer. Standing up with her in his arms, he started heading for the door that led upstairs. “You know, this is getting to be a habit. At least you’re conscious this time.”
Her beautiful eyes narrowed. “I’m going to kick your ass.”
“Afterward,” he said.
“Afterward,” she agreed.