“A nerd who figured out my room had been bugged,” she said.
“Well, that’s pretty much the mind-set you get into when you’re in my business,” he said. “It’d be nice if CCTs could just stroll into enemy country and have everyone greet us like liberators and ask what they could do to help us achieve our mission. But it doesn’t tend to work that way. So, most of the time you’re looking for the angle. For the guy who’s out to get you. So you can get him first.”
“Not that I didn’t already know it,” Julianne said, “but I’m beginning to realize how vastly different our military experiences were.”
“In some ways. Not so much in others.”
He glanced up in the mirror again. There was a long line of headlights snaking along the curving highway behind them. Dallas figured most, if not all, belonged to people coming home from work in Honolulu.
“At least in my job, no one was ever trying to kill me,” she said.
“You never know. You were a prosecutor, Juls. There have been cases of bad guys in civilian life trying, sometimes successfully, to hire themselves a hit man to off the person they consider responsible for putting them behind bars.”
“I’m not saying there was never a mistake that allowed an innocent person to be convicted. But most people are behind bars because they put themselves there by breaking the law.”
“You’re not going to get any argument from me on that one. In that way, I guess my job was easier, because I was able to shoot the bad guys.”
“And hope you didn’t make a mistake.”
“Mistakes happen. The people who are way above my pay grade who start the wars sure as hell had better understand that going in. The thing is, there’s no reason not to believe that someone out there might not have been real happy with you. In fact, if you’d stayed in the military long enough, you could’ve ended up with someone trying to kill you.”
“Well, isn’t that a pretty thought,” she murmured.
“The world is filled with possibilities.” He spotted a scenic overlook up ahead. There was already a car parked there, which he figured would make it as safe a place as any to pull off, then wait and see if anyone joined them. “A whole lot of them not pretty.”
“What are we doing now?” she asked as he pulled in about thirty feet from the parked car and cut the engine.
“Making out?” He looped an arm around her shoulder.
“I understand compartmentalization, but this is ridiculous.” She reached up to knock his hand away. “Somebody just bugged my room. Probably yours as well. Someone who may, for whatever reason, want to stop our investigation. And you want to play kissy-face?”
“I wouldn’t be opposed to that.” He laced their fingers together, squeezing her hand tightly, holding it where it was. “If you were inclined. Meanwhile, I figured we’d just act like any other couple enjoying a romantic Hawaiian evening and see what develops.”
“You think we may have been followed?”
“Don’t look back.” He reached across the space between them with his other hand and touched his fingers to her cheek. “But yeah, I think that might be a possibility.”
He felt her slight, involuntary shudder beneath his arm. Then felt her resolutely stiffen her shoulders. Oh, yeah. She was one tough cookie. Which, rather than putting him off, intrigued Dallas all the more.
“You act in the courtroom, right? When you’re presenting a case.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it acting.”
“But it’s not the same way you’d behave when you’re hanging around watching chick movies with Merry.”
“You remembered her name.”
“Yeah. I told you—”
“No.” She looked up into his face, studying him with that same serious look that suggested she wasn’t about to worry about those furrows etching her forehead causing wrinkles later in life. “You remembered her name—
said
her name—because you know she’s important to me.”
“That could be part of it,” he allowed. “Like I said, I’m looking forward to learning all about you, Juls. Because you intrigue the hell out of me and I want to peel away the layers. The same way I imagined peeling off that sexy-as-hell dress that night of the party at the del Coronado.”
She shrugged beneath their joined hands. “What you see is pretty much what you get.”
“No.” He skimmed the thumb of the hand that was still on her cheek across her lips. “No one is exactly how they seem. We all have different faces we show to the world. Different faces for different occasions.
“And right now, I’d be really, really happy if you’d just go along and put on your girl-parking-with-her-guy face.”
“So anyone who might be following us doesn’t suspect we know about their surveillance?” she asked, her lips parting beneath his stroking touch.
“Partly. But mostly because I’ve been thinking about kissing you a lot. And this seems a perfect time to see if the reality lives up to the fantasy.”
“Opportunist.” Those lips he’d been dying to taste tilted under his thumb and took any sting from her accusation.
“Absolutely.”
He tensed ever so slightly as another car, a four-door sedan that screamed military staff car, pulled into the lot. Without appearing to do so, he reached down with his left hand and pulled a pistol from his ankle holster.
“You expect me to get romantic when you’ve just put a gun between your legs?”
She did not sound at all thrilled. Neither did she sound the least bit nervous, which a lot of women might. Which made sense, given that she’d grown up in a military family.
“It’s only a precaution.”
He trailed his hand down her throat, lingering against her pulse beat, which leaped in response to his touch. Or maybe to the idea that they’d just gotten themselves in a situation that might require gunfire.
“Just don’t get carried away.” He pressed his lips against her hair and inhaled some spicy fragrance underlying the sweetness of the lei she was still wearing. “Although Glocks come with three internal safeties, if things get too hot, I could end up losing any chance to father Dallas O’Halloran Junior.”
He shifted his attention to her earlobe. No one was getting out of the car. Which was the good news.
“Is anything happening?”
“Not yet.” While he’d promised to be honest with her, he decided there was no reason to mention the fact that—talk about compartmentalizing—he was beginning to get one helluva boner.
Dallas wasn’t exactly thrilled by the way he so often seemed on the verge of losing his well-honed self-control whenever he was around this woman. To lose his edge at any time was dangerous. To lose it when bad guys might be gunning for him was insane.
But that didn’t change his need to taste.
As he lowered his head, he watched her lips part in anticipation. A lustrous invitation gleamed in her eyes, and if she was faking it for any possible observers, she ought to win an Oscar.
As his mouth covered hers, which was as soft as it looked, but much, much warmer, her breath caught, then shuddered out.
Her lips opened more fully, inviting his tongue to dip deeper.
Deciding not to think about all the reasons this could be a huge mistake, Dallas dived headlong into the kiss.
Her rich, dark taste, tinged with fruit and rum, seeped into his mouth, into his blood, causing it to burn. When he caught her lower lip between his teeth, her resultant tremor sent all that heated blood shooting south.
It was only a kiss, he reminded himself. And not even a real one, but one designed just for show. He could end it any time.
And pigs would sprout wings and start dive-bombing Pearl Harbor.
Because he was tempted to drag her onto his lap and take things farther, he dragged his mouth from hers, skimming his lips in an achingly leisurely pace over her face, brushing them against her temples before moving on to her closed lids.
“If we don’t stop, I’m going to forget this is fake,” he said against her hair. “Then I won’t be responsible for what happens next.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe it’s fake?”
“No. That you won’t be responsible. I’m starting to figure out that I may just have underestimated you.”
He drew his head back. “Was that a compliment I just heard escaping those luscious lips?”
“I’d already figured out that what people see isn’t exactly who you are,” she said. “But I am getting the feeling that whatever Spec Ops cowboy mentality you bring to a situation, you’re not one to duck responsibility.”
“Hard to do when lives are on the line. So.” He reluctantly backed away from temptation. “Ready to move to phase two of the operation?”
“It depends. If it involves having sex to continue this playacting we’re doing for that audio bug, I’m going to have to pass.”
Although the situation was a lot more serious than he’d thought when he’d signed up for this THOR gig, and seemed to be getting more and more so, Dallas laughed.
“Darlin’, believe me, when I get you into my bed, there isn’t going to be any playacting involved.”
“You sound awfully sure of yourself.”
“Not of myself.” He twisted the key in the ignition. “Of us. The chemistry’s been there from the beginning. You felt it. I felt it. Before it would’ve been inappropriate for either of us to act on it. Not only because of the situation we were in, on opposite sides of a legal case, but because you were an officer and I was enlisted.
“But the world turns; things move on. Now we’re civilians, so those old military rules of conduct don’t apply. Toss in some danger and shake well, and we’ve got ourselves a combustive situation.”
He pulled out of the lot and headed back in the direction they’d come, toward the base. “But while I’ve been known to be up for a one-night stand from time to time, in the right circumstances, so long as both parties agree that’s all it is, you and I both also know that one night together isn’t going to be enough.
“So, since this is too soon, and there’s no way we’ll be able to hook up on the boat, we’ll both have plenty of time to get comfortable with the idea.”
“Humph.” She folded her arms. “And if that doesn’t happen?”
“It will.”
She didn’t agree. But she didn’t argue either. Yet more progress, Dallas thought with satisfaction.
“Well, whoever the hell planted that bug sure as hell isn’t Special Forces,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because not only did he—”
“Or she.”
“Or she”—he accepted the correction—“stick it in one of the most obvious, clichéd places imaginable, they also should know enough to allow a couple cars to get between their target and their vehicle when they’re tailing someone.”
“That car that pulled into the overlook after us is behind us?”
Dallas liked that she didn’t turn around. Once again he thought that beauty and brains were a terrific combination. Add in her unflappability, and he couldn’t remember when any woman had intrigued him more.
“On our tail,” he said. “Not exactly riding our bumper, but close enough to not be even the least bit subtle.”
“Maybe they don’t want to be,” she considered. “Maybe whoever it is wants us to know we’re being watched.”
“It’s always possible it’s their goofy idea of a warning. But if that’s their goal, then they don’t know much about Special Forces. Because threatening us just makes us more determined to beat them into the ground.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. I’ve just figured something else out.”
“Oh?”
“Another reason THOR assigned you to this case is that your IQ is off the charts.”
“IQ is just a number,” he said with a shrug.
“That may be. But it’s one of the few things that wasn’t blacked out of your service record.”
Given that he’d already figured out the lady was a control freak, Dallas guessed she’d been more than a little frustrated by the lack of intel she’d been able to unearth. “They call them black ops for a reason.”
“I get that. And that’s the other reason. Because not only are you really, really smart, you’ve spent these past years working outside the rules, which means you see all the shades of gray. While my work required more of a black-and-white attitude.”
“That’s pretty much most military mind-sets,” Dallas allowed. “The world may be full of gray, but if you allow yourself to start thinking too much outside the black-and-white good guys and bad guys, you risk getting yourself—and your teammates—killed.”
“My father has this saying: ‘There’s a right way, a wrong way, and the Navy way.’ ”
“Which doesn’t allow much wiggle room.”
“No. And I like to think that I’m a bit more broad-minded than he is. But the thing is, if THOR didn’t seriously believe that we’re dealing with more than a simple suicide, they wouldn’t have assigned a guy who got a perfect score on his SAT who can also work the margins.”
“I’m not the only person in this car with a perfect SAT score.”
“Since you’ve already admitted to delving into my records, and undoubtedly with more success than I did yours, I’m not surprised you’d know that.”
He wondered if she knew that the reason he’d dropped out of Cal Poly after two years was that having gotten bored in the classroom, he’d been looking for something more exciting. Which he’d definitely found in the Air Force Special Forces.
“But I agree,” she said. “Numbers are just that—numbers. But while my work has admittedly left me not the most trusting of people, I never would’ve suspected we’d been set up. Or thought to look for a bug.”
“You would’ve if you’d spent the past years with terrorists trying to find and kill you. But since we’re working in the dark, until we can start interviewing sailors on that carrier, there’s no way I’m going to be leaving you alone. Just in case.”
“I’m not some weak-spined character from a woman-in-jeopardy movie who needs a big strong male’s protection.”
“Never said you were. But even SEALs and D-boys work in teams. No point putting yourself in a dangerous situation alone if you’ve got a wingman handy.”