Authors: Kat Attalla
“Are you always this long-winded?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Are you going to be yapping like this until we get back?”
The fear in her face drained away. “You had no intention of leaving me alone, did you?”
He shook his head and broke out in a wide grin.
“None at all.”
She smacked her palms into his chest and groaned. Although she was smaller than him by a head, he humored her and let her try to punish him. He enjoyed the feeling of her hands on him.
“And you just let me go on and on, making a fool of myself. Of all the contemptible….” She grabbed the collar of his shirt. “Rotten….” She shoved him backwards. “Slimy….”
She paused, and he saw her struggle for more adjectives to hurl at him. “Should I wait here while you get a thesaurus?”
She stomped her foot in frustration. “Oh, I hate you.”
He laughed and pulled her into his arms. He gazed into her eyes, trying to see how much conviction she held in her words. She was confused, maybe even a little frightened. But hate? God knows he’d given her enough reason. “No, you don’t hate me. But I’ll just bet you wish you did.”
* * * *
Lilly’s jaw dropped. He’d landed so close to the truth that she was stunned. She didn’t want to need him in any capacity. But she did, in more ways than she dared admit.
When she looked up again, he was no longer laughing. His dark eyes searched her face, and she knew his intention before he made a single move.
Stop him while you can
.
His strong arm circled her waist, pulling her even closer. The protest on the tip of her tongue was brushed away as their lips met, forcing a response she tried hard to suppress.
She raised her hands to push him away, but her traitorous arms locked around his neck. While her mind screamed
no
, her body moved so close she heard the beating of his heart drumming out all caution.
He explored her mouth with his tongue at the same time his hands explored her body, teasing and tantalizing, heightening every nerve ending. His rough hand slid gently under her tee shirt, gliding upward until it rested below her breast. He paused, as if expecting some kind of withdrawal, but she pulled him back.
Never had a kiss affected her in such a way. Every part of her body tingled, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. He moved his hand up and covered her breast, stroking the hardened tip until she let out a soft sigh of pleasure.
How did he make her react like that when she didn’t even like him? She broke away, trying to regain her sensibility. Her response had nothing to do with likes or dislikes. Logically, she knew that she merely experienced a physical reaction to an outside stimulus. Logic hadn’t propelled her into his arms to begin with. That was pure emotion, no matter how much she wanted to deny it to herself.
* * * *
Jack bit his bottom lip to keep from grinning. For someone who claimed to hate him, she’d certainly put a lot into that kiss. The soft panting and shining midnight-blue eyes that stared back was all the proof he needed. He wisely hid his triumph. Lilly reacted, and she was furious with herself. Any comment would unleash all that fury on him.
Even in her anger, when he leaned forward to kiss her again, she returned the kiss. At the same time she kissed him, her arms begin to tense. Only because he quickly caught her wrists in his hands was he spared the physical assault she clearly wanted to inflict.
“If I let you go, are you going to hit me?”
“Yes,” she hissed as she tried to yank her arms free. “Let me go.”
“So that you can hit me?
I think not.”
She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep, calming breath. “I won’t hit you.” Jack let her go and stepped back to look at her. Whips of blonde hair framed her flushed face. What a sensual beauty! Wild and passionate and very much shocked by her own behavior.
He raised one hand to her cheek, and she smacked it away violently. “You said you weren’t going to hit me.”
“I lied.”
He stifled another laugh.
“Oh, Lilly.
And you promised me not five minutes ago that you weren’t going to complain about anything. You even promised me
your
first born.”
“I didn’t promise you could father him.”
He cocked his eyebrow. “Then what’s the point? All I’d get is dirty diapers.”
As hard as she tried, she couldn’t contain a smile. She rested her head on the shoulder he offered and moaned. “I can’t win against you.”
He ran his hand along the side of her face and down her neck, twisting his finger through her hair to force her to look up. “It’s not a contest, baby. I can’t have you fighting me all the time. We have enough problems ahead.”
Lilly was a very independent woman. She didn’t like being told what to do, but in this case she seemed to accept his rules. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth from the beginning?”
“Because I didn’t know if you were involved or not.”
“Involved in what?”
“Don’t you have any idea what Santana was really exporting?”
She shook her head. “I never actually saw the cargo. He gave me the information, and I typed up the documents. Only sometimes my paperwork was so far off the mark that I was beginning to question my own abilities.”
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t take a genius fill out international shipping documents. But half the time he made me
change
the paperwork. Either I’d chosen the wrong shipper, or he claimed my calculations were off.”
“But we can’t prove that he changed anything. You signed all the paperwork.”
“I may be a farm girl but I’m no idiot. Every time he made me change it, I saved my original and made a copy of the changes he authorized. At first, I figured he was being overcharged for freight, and I wanted to get him proof. But after a few months I realized that something was wrong. So I asked him about it and when I didn’t like the answer I got, I took the file from my desk and left.”
That kind of proof could be the break they needed for a conviction. Santana must have known she had the originals or she wouldn’t be a threat to him. “Where is the file now?”
Lilly twisted her fingers together nervously. “What good are they? Those are shipments that have already left.”
“To see if there’s a pattern.”
Frowning, she mumbled sadly, “There’s no pattern. I read through them a dozen times trying to figure it out.
Different days, different cargo, different ships, different destinations.”
“But how many different customs officials?”
“What?”
“How does he always get them through customs? We’ve never been able to catch him. Every time he’s been searched, he’s come up clean. Someone has to be informing him.”
“What are you talking about?
Drugs?”
“No, drugs are a bigger problem on the import end, not export.”
“Guns?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
He couldn’t tell her, or her testimony would be worthless. Any good lawyer could make a case for collusion. Especially since Lilly’s signature appeared on everything. He had to keep her guessing. She knew export laws. Eventually, she would figure it out.
She leaned back against the rail and closed her eyes.
“Chemicals that can be used to manufacture weapons.
He sends them under the guise of medicines.”
He smiled, impressed with how quickly she caught on. “That’s the one.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t he give me correct information to begin with? Why make me go through two sets of paperwork?”
“To set you up for a fall if he got caught. He wanted to make it look like you were the one changing the paper work after he gave orders. I’m sure he was never expecting someone like you to walk out with the file of originals.” That came out tactlessly, he realized, when her eyes filled with tears.
“What you mean, is that he hired me because I’m so stupid.”
“I meant naïve, Lilly.
Too trusting.
You said it yourself. You saved the originals because you wanted to show him he was being overcharged for freight, not because you thought he was doing anything illegal. I’ll bet you even told him about the file when you questioned him.”
She lowered her eyes slowly. “I am stupid.”
“No, you’re not,” he said softly. “You knew something was wrong and you quit your job.”
She
slumped
her shoulders. “And got my landlady killed in the process.”
“Santana is to blame for that, and you can make him pay.” She couldn’t know how cunning and deadly Santana could be. Or that he would be
so
clever as to frame her in the process. Only his plan would backfire if he couldn’t get the file back. “Where are the originals, Lilly?”
“In a safe deposit box in New York.”
“We have to get to New York. No easy feat.”
“Why can’t we take a commercial airline?”
“Why don’t I just send up a flare and tell them where to find us?”
She let out a puff of air. “Well, excuse me for breathing.”
“Sorry. But the reason I am smuggling you into the States is so no one knows you’re there.”
He left out his suspicions about his own department so as not to worry her more. A call in for backup could be more dangerous that going it alone.
“Do you do this kind of work often, Jack?”
“That’s what I do. Although, I’ll admit, you are the first woman I’ve ever had to bring back. And you’ve given me a harder time than any man ever did. I was supposed to take you in Lisbon, when you had me ambushed by that crazy fisherman.”
She broke out in a smile, pleased that she’d caused him such trouble. “You only got a knock on the head. I had to get pawed for three hours by a man who smelled like codfish. I suppose I have you to thank for canceling all my credit cards too?”
He didn’t bother to fake remorse. “Time was running out. They’re ready to make a move on Santana. I need to get you back in the next three or four days.”
“If he has a man inside the customs department, wouldn’t he postpone shipments? They must know you have me by now.”
“If we’re lucky, they think we’re dead. I never called in after the explosion in Nice. That’s why I don’t want your passport showing up anywhere.”
“Oh,” she mumbled sorrowfully. She turned and folded her arms across the top of the rail to gaze out over the sea.
Jack put his hand on her shoulder. “Lilly. Why don’t you get some sleep? We’ll be docking sometime in the late morning, and you need to rest.”
“Yeah.
I need my beauty sleep,” she joked and pushed away from the rail.
He ran a slow gaze along the length of her body and sighed appreciatively. “No. You don’t need sleep for that. You’re put together quite nicely.”
She started to walk towards the stairs and turned back. “Perhaps you should put your glasses on and take another look.”
“Maybe you should take off your blinders have a look yourself.”
She shook her head and continued walking. “What do you know, anyway?”
Evidently more than her.
Half the men on the boat couldn’t take their eyes off her when they thought Jack couldn’t see them. They might be steeped in a culture that taught men not to notice another man’s wife, but they were still human.
She was an attractive woman and she had an incredibly sensuous body. Her well-rounded curves might not be considered chic in fashion magazines, but they’d caused him a few sleepless nights in the last few weeks, something no other woman had ever done to him before.
She was everything he avoided. His affairs had been limited to the operatives he worked with.
Women who knew the score.
He had lived his life by one simple creed: no emotions involved. So, how had that little, blonde pip-squeak, with
commitment
stamped across her forehead, broken through the granite wall he’d built around his heart?
Chapter Six
Lilly glanced at the bed again. When Jack slept he looked kind of sweet. Awake, he revealed his obnoxious personality whenever he opened his mouth. She’d never met anyone like him. He had the instincts of a shark and was just as lethal.
Although, he had his moments.
The night before, out on the deck, he’d made her feel special. Pretty. She’d never deluded herself about her looks. Her mother used to call her unique, but she soon figured out that unique was only another word for strange.
She glanced in the small mirror above the dressing table. Why couldn’t she have a flat chest? She stood on her toes and knotted the tee shirt at her waist, exposing the line of her hips. She slapped her palms against them in a vain hope that they would become smaller. It didn’t help, but it never had before.