DID
we kiss?
But that Claire was gone.
In her place was this pale, shaking ghost. Man, she was in bad shape. So thin he could feel bone when he touched her, bruised-looking eyes with a lost look in them, the very light tan she’d had in Laka gone without a trace, though she now lived in Florida.
This new Claire had had a panic attack when Stavros’s waiter started piling food on the table. Dan could have kicked himself in the ass. It hadn’t even occurred to him that her system simply wouldn’t be able to deal with it. And yet he’d seen how thin she’d become, held her briefly in his arms and felt the fragility. Duh. It meant her system couldn’t handle food.
He’d seen that before. He’d seen every manifestation of PTSD there was. His gunner in Afghanistan, who’d had both legs blown off, had simply turned his face to the wall, unwilling to live. He’d had to be fed parenterally for a couple of months to keep him alive.
Dan hadn’t thought of that. He’d simply wanted to take Claire to a place that was warm and welcoming, where the food was good and where she could relax. And Stavros’s place fit the bill. Except Stavros overdid the portions, always had. Marines had hearty appetites. And shit-for-brains Dan hadn’t thought of that.
Man, Claire had nearly fainted. She’d been pale before, but as the waiter slid the dishes in front of her, she’d turned the color of ice. He was lucky she hadn’t fainted, or thrown up.
But she’d had a panic attack. And in her panic, she’d blurted out her question and now looked as if she’d accidentally tripped a land mine.
This was going to be hard. But Dan was a Marine. He knew how to do hard.
He picked up her cold, trembling hand.
“I don’t know why I said that.” Claire’s shaking voice was high, breathless. “It’s crazy. I am so sorry. I don’t know where that came from, it just—”
Dan laid a finger across her lips. “Sh.” He couldn’t stand to see that lost look on her beautiful face. “Hush. It’s not crazy. You’re not crazy.” Reluctantly, he lifted his finger from her mouth. She had amazingly soft lips. He remembered that, nightly. “And for your information, we did kiss. Just before you left with Marie.”
“We did? We kissed?” Claire’s huge, silver blue eyes never left his face, watching him as carefully as if he were a grenade that could blow up at any moment. Or as if he would kiss her again.
Which, well, he wanted to do. Badly. So badly he held his right fist under the table, tightly clenched. It had taken all his willpower—and he had a lot of willpower—to take his finger away from her. He didn’t just want his finger against her mouth. He wanted his own mouth there, too. He wanted to be mouth to mouth, chest to chest, groin to groin, with Claire Day. So close he could breathe for her. So close he could feel her heartbeat.
“Yeah.” His voice was hoarse. He cleared it. “And then you went out and got yourself blown up.”
Her face lightened a little. It wasn’t a smile, but it was the ghost of one. “I’m sure the two events were unrelated,” she said. The big chandelier in the middle of the room reflected off her eyes as she searched his, bright lances of silver. “How did we—how did we get to that point? Had we been . . . dating? That past week? Because I don’t remember you at all.”
“We didn’t date.” Dan pushed a small plate of baklava a little closer. “Eat some of that. You don’t have to finish it, stop when you don’t want any more. But I want you to eat a little. One. Just a bite or two of one, if you can’t finish it. Please.”
Because now Dan knew what his new mission in life was. Dan had been intensely mission oriented ever since he joined the Marines. He focused on his goal and he achieved it.
And now his goal was to take care of this incredible woman. She was magic. Smart and beautiful and strong, brought low by thugs. He’d lost her and by some miracle had found her. He wasn’t losing her again. No way.
“Yessir.” A corner of her beautiful mouth lifted. For a second, Dan had a flash of the woman that was, hidden somewhere inside this frail, wounded creature. She wanted out and he wanted to help her get out. “Nobody disobeys the detachment commander.”
That was true. In times of danger, the detachment commander was commander in chief. He was to be obeyed instantly. He was God.
“Damn straight.” Dan cut a corner of a piece of Stavros’s superb baklava. “Now put that in your mouth.”
“Yessir,” she said again. He watched the forkful disappear in her mouth, and envied it. “So.” She tilted her head to one side, considering him. He knew what he was. A battered thirty-four year old with a metal knee, no spleen, half deaf in one ear, who’d had to start over from scratch. A man who owned his own home and his own business, but who didn’t have looks and didn’t have charm.
She smiled. “I guess it was that old classic. The moonlight, the exotic locale, the gunfire . . .”
“Exactly.” Great. A flash of the old Claire Day. “Now eat.”
SHE ate.
Two
pieces of the baklava.
He was interesting, but she found herself tuning him out, letting the low rumble of his voice roll over her while she observed him. Though he wasn’t overly tall, he had the broadest shoulders she’d ever seen, twice the size of the chair’s back. He had on a white dress shirt, but no tie. A tie would look strange on him, she thought. A little too milquetoast and civilized for that strong, tanned throat. Instead, he had the first button of the shirt open and an intriguing swirl of dark hair peeped out.
Her last lover, Maurice, sweet, vain Maurice, had manscaped like crazy. It had itched like the devil growing back. Over dinner Maurice would constantly scratch his chest and she had to pretend nothing was happening. Just like she pretended that she was using her Clinique eye lift cream up faster than usual while the skin around Maurice’s eyes grew noticeably softer.
Dan Weston was the furthest thing possible from a metrosexual. Judging by the fine, weather-beaten lines around his eyes, he had never in his life moisturized. She couldn’t even begin to imagine him going in for a chest and leg wax. Maurice had had a weekly manicure. Dan’s hands were big and rough, callused, the nails clean and cut but not manicured.
They were fascinating hands, though. Dark and broad and sinewy, the forearm muscles visible beneath the shirtsleeve. They were the strongest hands she’d ever seen.
Everything about him fascinated her. The ultra-strong, fit body. The deep voice. The utterly male vibe coming from him like steam off a grate, mixed in with a gazillion male pheromones.
It wasn’t until they were getting ready to go that Claire realized that the fascination he held for her had sucked her right out of herself. For a year now, she’d been like the walking dead. Barely able to function, hardly aware of the world outside, living completely inside her broken self. She’d barely spoken a dozen words to anyone.
And now she’d eaten—if not a full meal, at least food—with another human being, talked to him, sat so close she could feel his body heat.
She felt like a baby that had spent its first year in the dark, but now was walking on shaky feet toward the light. It was wonderful, but she also felt exhausted. What little energy she had had been eaten up in the panic attack.
The huge fire at her back, Dan sitting so close to her, melted the icy core she carried around inside herself. She felt warm, for the first time in a long time. Warm and . . . sleepy. Her eyes drooped.
Dan laughed, jolting her upright. “I guess you’re not up for this great jazz club on Wisconsin Avenue right now.”
“Guess not,” Claire said sheepishly. Then, before she could stop herself, “Maybe tomorrow night.”
Well, that was dumb.
She was a
spook
, for heaven’s sakes. Or had been. Capable of keeping her country’s secrets, more than capable of the security dance, where you doled out just enough intel to get what you wanted, making sure, always, the equation was in your favor.
Claire had gone to endless international meetings and to an infinity of cocktail parties where her brief had been to draw out some shard of intel and she had never, ever blurted anything out. Every word she spoke had been as precisely calibrated as if it had been turned on a lathe.
And now look at her. Just opening her mouth and . . . plop. Whatever was bouncing around in her crazy head at that moment came falling out. Lord.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
She had no idea where she would be tomorrow night. Probably back home, in her big, empty house. Why should she be here? She’d come racing up thinking this man could magically erase the clouds in her mind, but he couldn’t. He could only make her eat and feel warm.
Whatever had happened in Laka remained essentially a mystery, except for the intriguing detail that she’d kissed him.
But besides the kiss, what claim did she have on his time? None. He was a busy man, ran his own company and successfully, too, if that office was any indication. A successful businessman didn’t have time to just drop everything because an old acquaintance showed up. An old acquaintance who didn’t even remember him.
“I’m sorry. That was dumb of me. I should be . . .”
Home by this time tomorrow.
The words stuck in her throat.
His mouth turned up as he watched her flounder. Was that—was that a
dimple
? Maybe dimple was too strong a word for what appeared on that rough face. A dent. It was definitely a dent. A smile-induced dent.
Dan picked her hand up and brought it to his mouth, hot breath washing over her palm. He planted a soft kiss in the center of her palm. She caught her breath, pulled her hand away and placed in on her lap, under the table. Curling her fingers around the spot that felt as if a small sun had blossomed there.
“I’d love to take you wherever you want to go. Tomorrow, the next day. Whenever. Today you surprised me. Tomorrow I’m clearing the decks for you. My time is yours.”
Claire blinked. She opened her mouth then closed it. There was nothing she could say that wouldn’t be wrong. Her mind was blank, utterly void.
He watched her, eyes fixed on her face. “You’re tired,” he said gently, reaching out a long finger to touch what she knew would be the bruised flesh under her eyes. God knows she’d seen enough of that in the mirror this past year. “Do you want me to take you back to your hotel?”
Such an easy question, with no easy answer.
Yes, please, I am dying to get into my nightgown, crawl into the unfamiliar bed and stare at the ceiling until a shallow, troubled sleep takes me around three in the morning, during which I will probably be woken up by a nightmare. My favorite.
Or
—No, God no. Take me home with you, get me naked and have wild monkey sex with me.
Whoa. Where had
that
come from? Never over-sexed at the best of times, Claire had spent the past year essentially dead from the neck down, in a sexless, utterly man-less place.
She didn’t want him to take her home and throw her on the sofa and have his wild way with her. What she wanted was to be a woman who
wanted
that, a woman with a few hormones floating around in her system.
Her head hurt.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Back to the hotel, please.”
Dan obviously ran a tab because they didn’t go through the whole check and tip thing. He simply gave some kind of invisible signal and a waiter appeared with their coats. A minute later they were walking to his car.
It was freezing cold. The stars were like glistening diamonds in the clear black sky overhead. The sidewalk was slippery with ice. Claire wasn’t used to cold weather anymore and looked down to watch her feet.
And then she realized she didn’t need to. Dan had curled his arm through hers, his muscular frame warm and solid at her side. Claire knew, with a sure animal instinct, that she would never slip and fall with Dan Weston by her side. She was perfectly okay as long as he was there.
After a minute, she relaxed and enjoyed the cold air against her face after the heat of the restaurant.
The last of her nausea cleared away in the chill night air. With Dan walking beside her, strong, focused and attentive, panic attacks seemed far, far away. Through her clothes and his she could feel strength and heat, the kind of strength and heat that was contagious, that she was able to borrow for a while. The best kind.
They approached the BMW and Dan put his hand in his coat pocket. The vehicle suddenly popped to life, headlights flashing, doors unlocking, like a living thing glad to see its master.
Dan opened the passenger door and helped her inside. She was still arranging her big down coat around her knees when he got into the driver’s seat.
He gave her a brief glance then bent to turn the key in the ignition. It was so cold their breaths created white clouds around their heads.
“It’ll warm up in a second.” He turned to her and pulled her seat belt out and down, clicking it into place.
Then he lifted his head. They were almost nose to nose and the expression on his face took her breath away.
Pure sex. Pure male desire. That’s what she saw on his hard features. Their eyes met. Held.
He was utterly still. A muscle twitched over his cheekbone.
He wanted her and she had no idea what to do with that knowledge. Her mind was completely fogged up, more than usual. His desire and hers twining in a complex mix of emotions she had no idea how to untangle.
Her
desire.
That was another shocker.
He wanted her and she wanted him right back, but for all the wrong reasons. Because he was so hot he melted the icy chill that surrounded her. Because he had strong hands that wouldn’t let her fall. Because he was completely, gloriously sane and she was . . . she was slightly loony on her best day. Because he was a Marine and was guaranteed to make her feel safe when she woke up at three in the morning, alone and terrified, with the echo of danger and voices clamoring in her head.
Those were not good reasons to take a man to your bed.
His dark eyes traveled down her face to her mouth, lingered there, then moved back up to her eyes. She’d felt his gaze like a caress, like a kiss. He was so dense with muscles it was like he exerted his own gravity field. Because she felt its tug so much, and wanted to fall forward into him, she pulled back. Not by much, just a slight shift of balance, but it was enough to trigger a release of the tension. Dan pulled back, too.
A minute later, they were on the road. The night was clear, inky black, frost riming cars and hedges and bare tree branches. Claire turned her head and stared out the window because the urge to stare at him was way too strong.
If she stared at him the way she wanted, she’d be sending him the exact opposite signal she’d sent by pulling back. Yes, no, yes, no . . . just another sign of her lunacy.
But oh, how Dan attracted the eye. Maybe it was because she hadn’t been near a man except for her father and doctors for a year, but he seemed to her to encompass everything wonderful about his gender.
Claire had always liked men. She’d missed the company of men this past year, terribly.
And here was the malest man she’d come up against in a long time, making his intentions clear. She could have his company for as long as she wanted it, which was nice, but sex was going to be thrown into the pot, which was
theoretically
nice, but . . .
She simply had no idea whether she was up to it. Whether her weakened body could withstand sweaty sex, whether her weakened mind would bear up under the stress. Oh, God. She had no idea of anything, except for the fact that she was a mess.
Better to just shut up.
Dan seemed comfortable with silence, though, and found no need to fill the void with guy talk or even seduction talk. He simply drove, easily and well, checking on her from time to time.
Claire remembered a saying an Italian—a very handsome, very drunk young Tuscan cultural attaché—had once told her when trying to wheedle her into bed.
Una parola è poco, due sono troppe.
One word isn’t enough, two are too many.
So she held her peace, enjoying the heated cabin as the luxurious car arrowed its way through the dark, cold streets, enjoying the feeling of being taken somewhere without having to arrange it or worry about it.
The soft hum of the powerful engine lulled her into a pleasant lassitude. Dan rolled to a gentle stop and killed the engine.
“We’re here,” his deep voice announced.
A streetlight cast enough light into the cabin to see him by. In the penumbra, his strong features only half-lit, he looked almost exotic, skin the bronze of an ancient weapon. Deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, firm mouth. Strong sinewy hands still holding the steering wheel. Shoulders so broad they cut off her view of the street as he turned to her, watching her.
Oh, God.
The temptation to ask him inside, to take him into her room, was so strong she had to clench her teeth against it.
This man, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, could make her forget her problems. Sex with him would burn away all thoughts of the bombing a year ago and all memories of this past cold, lonely year.
When he opened her door and her feet touched the ground their eyes met in an electric moment of perfect understanding.
He wanted her. What she was going to do about it was up to her.
In about three seconds, Claire was going to have to make a decision, a big one. An important one. One that would have consequences.
She’d been used to making decisions in her job. Big ones. Important ones. Fully aware that they had consequences, and serious ones. A wrong report and all hell could break loose.
Like when she hadn’t seen the Red Army coming.
But ordinarily, she felt more than up to the task of deciding, of assessing a situation and coming down on one side or the other, because she had always had a strong feeling for which side was the right one.
Right now, it felt utterly impossible. Her mind was split into two parts. Yes. No. Yes. No.
Yes.
Wow. If Dan Weston lived up to his appearance and the vibes he gave out, he’d be amazing in bed. And oh, how she could do with some hot sex, hot enough to take her out of herself, warm her up from the inside out. Make her forget. Drown her in sensuality. Oh, yeah.