Trust Me
Trust Me
Caroline Cross
She had trusted him wtih her heart and been devestated. Now she had to trust him with her life. Lilah Cantrell: She couldn't imagine anything worse than being held in a Third World prison. Until she set eyes on Dominic Steele–the very first man who'd stirred her desires and broken her heart.Dominic Steele: The ex-U.S. Navy Seal turned bodyguard-for-hire tried to keep his rescue mission strictly professional, but Lilah–and the memories of their shared history–awakened his long-dormant protective instincts…and passion. Could their newfound trust, born of desperation, sustain them once they reached safety? Or was that when the real danger would begin?
Trust Me
Caroline Cross
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This is a book about second chances.
I owe mine to two terrific editors, Julie Barrett and
Melissa Jeglinski. Thanks for giving me the chance to
write this book and for always making me look better.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
One
The shriek of the bolt being drawn in the cell block door shattered the sultry afternoon silence.
Lilah jerked her head up. For a second, she remained frozen. Then she scrambled upright, scooted to the far edge of the thin mat that served as her bed and pressed herself back against the rough concrete wall. She braced herself as the door at the end of the corridor crashed open.
Against a dim spill of light, a pair of jail guards staggered into sight. A man hung limply between them. His head lolled. His feet trailed in the dust. As the guards dragged him forward, Lilah stared at tanned, muscular arms, the hard biceps stretching the sleeves of a faded olive T-shirt. At inky hair that gleamed even in the murky illumination. At the trickle of blood beading at the edge of a determined mouth.
With a long-suffering grunt, the jailers hoisted their burden a little higher. The prisoner’s head tilted sideways, allowing her a quick view of a straight blade of a nose and the strong clean line of a cheekbone.
All of which abruptly seemed familiar.
Her heart leapt even as her mind reeled. No. It can’t be. What would the love of her reckless youth, the masculine yardstick against whom she’d once measured all others, the man who at times still invaded her sleep and hijacked her dreams—what would he be doing here, in the farthest reaches of the Caribbean, in remote San Timoteo, at one of El Presidente’s private jails?
Her mind must’ve snapped. It was the only explanation that made sense, Lilah decided. She’d tried to be brave, to hold on and be strong, but finally she’d lost it. What’s worse, she was hallucinating.
And yet….
The guards dumped the newcomer onto the adjoining cell’s concrete floor. One of them lingered long enough to give their newest captive a vicious kick to the ribs, then exited, slamming first the cell door and then the corridor door behind him.
Every nerve in Lilah’s body screamed for action. Yet the harsh lessons of the past month had reinforced her innate sense of caution. Ignoring the pounding of her heart, she forced herself to stay where she was, to wait for the sounds of the bolt slamming home and her captors’ footsteps receding. Then, unable to remain still another instant, she launched herself off the bed and across the cell.
She reached the unyielding metal bars, her gaze locked on her fellow prisoner’s face as she slid to her knees. Her pulse thrummed wildly in her ears as she studied the straight eyebrows, the strong chin and the killer cheekbones.
This close, there could be no doubt. The years may have added width to his shoulders, heft to his muscles, a few character lines to his handsome face, but it was him.
Dominic Devlin Steele.
Stunned, she tried to think. What on earth could he be doing here? Was it sheer coincidence? An incredible twist of fate?
That hardly seemed probable. Yet the only other explanation was that he was here deliberately, and the only person likely to orchestrate that would be her grandmother. Try as she might, Lilah couldn’t imagine a world where Abigail Anson Clarke Cantrell Trayburne Sommers’s path would cross Dominic Steele’s.
Much less why he’d agree to put himself in harm’s way for her.
Then she realized none of it mattered. After a month of fear, loneliness and growing desperation, it was simply wonderful to see a familiar face. Even his.
Especially his.
She reached through the bars. “Dominic? It’s me. Lilah. Lilah Cantrell.” Fingers trembling, she touched her hand to his cheek.
On some marginal level, she registered that his skin was reassuringly warm. That the faint prickle of his beard against her palm tickled. And that nearly a decade had done nothing to dim the hot little thrill of pleasure that touching him brought her.
But mostly her focus was all on the fact that he was far, far too still. “I can’t believe it’s really you. That you’re here, of all places. The thing is, you need to wake up. Wake up and talk to me. Or at least stop being so still. Please?”
He didn’t stir. Biting her bottom lip, she tried to decide what to do now, only to have panic flood her when she realized she didn’t have a clue. Her fright gave birth to a lump in her throat and the next thing she knew, she had to press her lips together to muffle a sudden sob.
Her weakness shamed her. So what if seeing someone—anything—familiar emphasized how demoralizing the past month’s incarceration had been? So what if she’d begun to lose hope that she’d ever see home again? Or that, as hard as she’d tried to convince herself it didn’t matter, she’d started to wonder whether she’d even be missed?
She was a Cantrell. Ever since she could remember she’d been warned against the dangers of self-indulgence, the perils of losing control.
More to the point, you aren’t the one lying bruised and unconscious on a dirty floor. She should be focused on how to aid Dominic, not kneeling and wringing her hands like a vapid heroine in a B movie. She could just imagine what Gran would say. “For heaven’s sake, child!” the familiar, autocratic voice declared impatiently in her head. “Quit your sniveling and at least try to live up to your family name!”
Like a dash of cold water, imagining her grandmother’s disdain steadied her. Swallowing hard, Lilah took a deep breath to force back the tidal wave of emotion that had so nearly swamped her. To her relief, the tightness in her throat eased and her hands quit shaking. Heartened, she wasted no time turning her attention back to Dominic.
First things first, she decided. She’d do her best to see if she could pinpoint where he was injured; then she’d worry about what to do about it.
She set about examining him. Careful to keep her touch as light as a kiss of sunlight, she skimmed her fingertips over those areas of his head and face that she could reach through the bars, checking for knots or blood or anything else that seemed out of place. Next came his neck and throat. Then she cautiously probed the side of him nearest to her, checking each rib, the long valley of his spine, the solid curves of arm and shoulder.
Nothing. Except for the heart-stopping discovery that he was all taut skin and steely muscle, exactly the way she remembered, she remained as clueless as she’d been minutes earlier about his possible injuries.
She fought the return of despair. “Come on, Nicky,” she whispered, her old pet name for him inadvertently slipping off her tongue as she rubbed the skin-warmed cotton of his shirt beneath her fingertips. “Quit playing around. I need you. I really, really need you. Wake up. Please please please wake up—”
“Jeez, Li. Chill.”
“Oh!” Her gaze jerked to Dominic’s face and she found herself staring into a pair of familiar grass-green eyes. “You’re awake!”
“Yeah.” He remained motionless, simply staring at her for several long seconds. Then he gingerly lifted his head an inch off the ground, gave it a slight, tentative shake and winced. “Lucky me.” He squeezed his eyes shut again, as if even the cell’s shadowy light was more than he could tolerate.
Lilah felt a fresh stab of alarm. What if he had a concussion or a skull fracture? Or—she recalled the boot to the side he’d taken and shuddered—broken ribs or a fractured spleen? Heaven help them both, he could have internal bleeding and not even know it. Her throat dry, she swallowed. “Where does it hurt?”
“Where doesn’t it?” he muttered. “Still—” he lifted an admonishing finger “—I’ve survived worse, so don’t go getting your panties in a twist, okay?” With a resigned-sounding sigh, he opened his eyes, raised himself up on his elbow and reached out to lay one large, warm hand over hers where it clutched the bars. “Trust me. I’m all right. I just need a minute.”
Trust me. The words washed over her, an echo from their past. How many times had he said just that, after daring her to do something dangerous, forbidden, but oh so tantalizing? How many times had she gazed into those fabulous eyes and lost a battle with temptation?
How many times had his touch made her brain fog while her body had come alive with desire?
Enough to remember him forever.
He released her hand unexpectedly to roll onto his side, breaking her wild thoughts. Grimacing, he flexed his jaw and touched an exploratory fingertip to his cut lip. He scrubbed the blood away with the back of his hand. Then, in one lithe move, he climbed to his feet.
Frozen in place, fighting to appear calm, she watched him take stock. His big muscular body bunched and flexed as he swiveled his head, rolled his shoulders, bounced lightly to test thighs, calves and knees. He rubbed briefly at a spot above his left pectoral and then sent her a pleased look. “Good news, princess. I think I’m gonna live.”
Princess. The intimate nickname, uttered in that casual, coolly amused tone of voice, felt like a slap to the face. Suddenly aware that she was still kneeling at his feet like some obedient harem girl, she scrambled up.
Oblivious to her, he took a slow look around, making a complete revolution as he took note of the solitary barred window set high in the far wall, the worn, wafer-thin woven pads atop the concrete slab ledges that passed for beds, the grate-covered holes that comprised the Third World bathroom facilities.
He gave a soundless whistle. “Man. You really must’ve pissed off the wrong person. I’ve seen prisons more cheerful than this.” His gaze swung back to her. For a second, something almost dangerous gleamed in his eyes and then his teeth flashed white, destroying that impression. “Wait. My mistake. This is a prison.”
He was making a joke. A joke. Here she’d been terrified out of her wits, afraid he might be irreparably injured, utterly overcome at seeing him again—and he was poking fun at their surroundings.
She stiffened. Humiliation warred with indignation, and indignation won. Not that she intended to let on. No way would she risk what little dignity she still possessed by letting on that he could still get to her.
Besides, she had bigger fish to fry, since his little inventory of his working body parts, coupled with his critique of the accommodations, had given her time to think.
“Your being here isn’t a coincidence, is it?” she said, recalling his first words to her and his utter lack of surprise at her presence in a desolate jail cell in an obscure little island country a million miles from home. “As a matter of fact,” she went on, ignoring his penetrating eyes to glance pointedly at the bruise starting to darken one strong cheekbone and the lip still oozing blood, “you deliberately did something to get yourself thrown in here because you knew this was where I was being held.”
Silence. Then his battered mouth quirked. “Score one for the rich girl.”
For a second, she had a powerful urge to hit him. Not that she had a hope of reaching him, but still….
Horrified, she took a firm grip on the bars that separated them, reminding herself yet again that she was a Cantrell and as such she would not, could not, lose her temper. Especially not now, when there was so much she burned to know. “How did you find me? How did you even know I was here in the first place? Did my grandmother send you? And why would you come? Why would you put yourself at risk like this?”
Logic insisted his presence simply couldn’t be a coincidence, but she still couldn’t seem to make sense of it.
After all, even ignoring the astronomical odds against him and her grandmother connecting, it had been ten years since his and Lilah’s last encounter. Ten years since she’d told him he’d better go and he’d looked at her with the same sort of nonchalant expression that currently graced his face. Ten years since he’d crushed her heart with a careless shrug and the comment that it was “her loss” before stalking out of her life forever.
Even now, the memory hurt. It made the past seem not so very long ago. As did the infuriating way he was currently considering her, so unruffled, so superior, so—so male. “Explain what you’re doing here. Now.”
“Tell you what, Li.” As cool as a wolf in winter, he padded over, braced his big hands above hers on the bars and leaned forward, his sheer size and proximity making her stomach tumble. “Do us both a favor, sweetheart. Take a deep breath, shut your pretty mouth and I’ll tell you everything I know.”
Two
Denver, Colorado
Five days earlier
“Hey.” Dominic ducked his head into his older brother’s spacious office at Steele Security headquarters. “You got a minute?”
Gabriel, who was seated at his granite-topped desk, glanced up, then resumed sorting through a stack of paperwork. “Sure. Come on in.”
Dom strolled across the flagstone floor. Like all the offices in the ultramodern, low-slung building tucked away in the city’s warehouse district, this one boasted a wall of glass that looked out on an interior courtyard. Today, as befitted January in the Rockies, the outside world was a brilliant sea of white, courtesy of the foot of fresh snow that had fallen overnight. “Taggart says we’re turning down a case.” After Gabe, Taggart was number two in the Steele brothers birth order hierarchy.
“That’s right.” Gabe’s tone was matter-of-fact. “The client’s coming in at two. I’m going to recommend she contact Allied.”
He stopped, rocking back on the heels of his Italian leather boots. “Why?”
“We don’t have the manpower.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” Gabe made a quick notation on a page and set it to one side. “Taggart thinks he may finally have a lead on the elusive Ms. Bowen. Josh is going to be tied up with the Romero trial in Seattle for at least two weeks, and everyone else is either hip deep in the Dallas industrial espionage case or working the economic summit in London. That leaves me, and as much as I wouldn’t mind some field work, I’m needed here at the moment.”
Dominic studied his brother. To an outsider, Gabe would no doubt appear calm and dispassionate, an image deliberately encouraged by his choice of attire—a starched white shirt, rep tie and severe charcoal suit that just happened to be polar opposites of Dom’s own laid-back black slacks and green linen shirt. Only someone who knew him well—like a brother—would be likely to notice the sudden tension lining his mouth and shadowing his eyes.
But then, both Gabe and Taggart were wound pretty tight; Dom had long ago concluded that his two older brothers had spent way too much time in the line of duty—no doubt at the old man’s command—and had missed out on hanging loose and living a little.
Not him. Dom had decided early on that life was too short to spend his time all stressed out worrying about things that might never happen and bracing for every possible disaster. Besides, somebody had to keep Steele One and Steele Two from imploding, and while Taggart was most likely a lost cause, Dom still had hopes for Gabe.
His esteemed older brother just needed an occasional reminder that the world wouldn’t end if he enjoyed himself once in a while. Or—he thought as he planted himself in one of the luxe leather chairs facing Gabe’s desk—didn’t try to stand in the way of somebody else enjoying himself.
“Okay, so everybody’s busy,” Dom said, stretching out his long legs. “What’s that make me? The invisible man?”
Gabe frowned down at the paper before him. “You’re still recovering. It’s only been two months since the shooting. You need more time.”
“No, I don’t. I feel fine. Hell, I feel more than fine. What with physical therapy, working on my house and all the time I’ve spent out on the course at Fort Carson, I’m in the best shape of my life. For sure I’m in better shape than some desk-riding cowboys I know.”
Gabe stoically ignored the insult. “Forget it.”
Dom considered his brother’s dismissive tone and reminded himself he was no longer the brash, hell-raising teenager who’d once felt compelled to challenge Gabe’s “I’m-four-years-older-than-you” authority.
Okay, so his big brother had founded Steele Security and been the driving force in establishing its reputation as a top-notch organization that could handle anything from high-profile protection to undercover investigations to locating missing persons. But Dom, along with Gabe, Taggart and two more of the nine Steele brothers, had since contributed to the company’s growing prestige and were now full partners in the enterprise.
As such, he got a say in things, whether Gabe liked it or not. “I don’t think I want to forget about it,” he said evenly.
Gabe slowly set down his pen. Raising his head, he met Dom’s direct gaze with one of his own. “Let me guess. You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
Dom grinned. “Not a chance. So you might as well tell me what’s going on and get it over with.”
For a very long moment, Gabe continued to stare at him. Then he gave an exaggerated sigh. “Aw, hell. You always have been pigheaded.” Reaching over, he snagged a file folder off the top of a stack to his left, speaking even as he thumbed it open. “The client is Abigail Sommers. I did protection work for her when I was first getting started. She was born an Anson, as in the Anson Mining Group, and over the course of eighty-odd years she’s single-handedly increased what was already a pretty sizable family fortune. Along the way, she’s outlived four husbands and both of her children.
“According to the message she left on my voice mail, her only grandchild is being detained in San Timoteo, an island nation—”
“—in the southern Caribbean. Run for the past dozen years by a corrupt ex-army general, Manolo Condesta, who insists on being called El Presidente.” With a chiding look, Dom tipped back his chair and folded his hands behind his head. “I’ve been living in London the past few years, Gabe, not on the moon. I’m up to speed on all the banana republics. I don’t need a lesson in geography or world politics.”
Gabe’s stern mouth tipped up the faintest fraction. “Got it. Sorry.”
Dom shrugged it off. “So what’s the grandkid accused of?”
His brother glanced down at the file, even though Dom knew very well all the information was already securely lodged in his encyclopedic memory. “Rioting, assaulting a policeman, resisting arrest.”
He gave a nod of understanding. It was an old story—spoiled rich kid takes a trip to a foreign country, gets drunk or stoned and does something obnoxious that pisses off the local officials.
“I’m surprised I haven’t heard a word about it in the press. Usually they love this stuff.”
Gabe nodded. “True. But Condesta’s got an iron grip on info going out of San Timoteo. And due to some bad tabloid press decades ago, Abigail is rabid about protecting her privacy. Everyone who works for her in any capacity signs a nondisclosure contract.”
“Okay, but from what I’ve heard about El Presidente, he’ll let people go for the right dollar amount. With all the money Mrs. Sommers has, she must have government contacts who can help?”
“Officially, the U.S. government has no relations with San Tim since it’s been added to the terrorist watch list. Unofficially, they’ve done what they could.
“Problem is, Condesta keeps upping the ante. Abigail said that twice he’s set a price, twice she’s agreed to pay it. And twice he’s changed his mind just hours before the scheduled exchange and demanded more. The asking price is now at one million, with no end in sight, and in the meantime her granddaughter’s been held for over four weeks.”
“Not good,” Dom repeated. While young Miss Sommers most likely was being confined someplace that more closely resembled a country club than Alcatraz, the hard truth was that women were vulnerable in ways men were not. “So what does the client want from us? More negotiations? An extraction?”
“I don’t know. All she said in her message was that the situation was untenable and something had to be done.”
“She’s right about that. And as of now, I’m the guy to do it.”
“No.” The eldest Steele closed the file as if that settled the matter.
“Yes.” His voice for once not the least bit amused, Dom straightened, bringing his chair down with a thump. “I don’t need a babysitter, Gabe. What I need is some action. Because if I have to spend another week sitting on my ass doing nothing but counting snowflakes, I’m likely to go tear up some Third World country myself.”
“Dammit, Dom—”
“Give it up, big brother. You did a hell of a job taking care of us after Mom died, but we’re all big boys now. We can take care of ourselves. Besides—” he forced himself to ease up and summoned an ironic smile “—as has been previously established, you are not, as the kids say these days, the boss of me. I’m going to San Timoteo, and that’s all there is to it.
“That being the case,” he went on without missing a beat as he picked up the file and climbed to his feet, “it appears I’ve got some reading to do, so I’ll let you get back to your paperwork. But I’ll see you and Mrs. Sommers in the conference room in—” he glanced at his watch “—an hour. Don’t be late.”
Just for a second, Gabriel’s green eyes narrowed dangerously. Then his expression unexpectedly relaxed and he unbent enough to murmur a caustic two-word epithet that started with an F and ended with a U.
Laughing, Dom headed for the door.
Abigail Anson Sommers didn’t look like anyone’s dear old grandma, Dom decided, observing her as Gabriel ushered her into the conference room. Tall and slim, she had finely modeled features, thick, upswept white hair, impeccable posture and the aloof expression of an absolute monarch.
He stepped around the large, glossy table to pull out her chair.
“Thank you, young man,” she said as she took her seat, her manner pure queen to commoner as he and Gabriel also sat.
“My pleasure,” he replied, secretly amused by her not-so-subtle effort to put him in his place.
Foregoing formal introductions, she got straight to the point. “According to your brother, you had something to do with that Grobane incident,” she said crisply. “The one that was in all the papers.”
“Something,” he agreed, settling back. He met her probing gaze with an unflinching one of his own. She could pry all she wanted, but he had no intention of discussing his last protection detail with her. And not just because it would be a breach of client confidentiality, even though that concern might be considered by some to be gone with the wind due to all the media attention the incident had received.
But because, unlike the press and the public, he didn’t consider taking a bullet for a client heroic. Nope, he’d screwed up, failed to follow his gut and was just damn lucky the bad guy had been a lousy shot. He still had nights when he would lie awake in a cold sweat thinking how close Carolina Grobane had come to being injured or killed.
He didn’t think he could’ve lived with that. And he sure as hell didn’t intend to rehash it—or court praise for something he considered to be far from his most shining hour, popular opinion be damned.
Evidently mistaking his silence for modesty, something approaching approval registered on Mrs. Sommers’ autocratic face. “Gabriel also mentioned you served our country as a Navy SEAL. And that you received numerous medals and commendations.”
This time, he sent his brother a reproachful look, which was met with a slight, live-with-it shrug. A little ruefully—apparently St. Gabe wasn’t above some minor payback—he returned his gaze to the client. “Yes, ma’am, that’s true.”
She pursed her lips. “He also assures me that if anyone can get my Delilah out of this mess she’s in, it’s you.”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly?” Her arctic-blue eyes drilled into him. “And what exactly do you mean by that, pray tell?”
“It means I have a general idea of your granddaughter’s situation, but I’d be doing us both a disservice if I made any promises until I know more,” he said easily.
There was a prolonged silence as once again she considered him, then she abruptly murmured, “Hmmph.” Leaning sideways, she reached into her large handbag and pulled out a fat document-sized manila envelope.
“I anticipated this,” she said brusquely. “It’s all here. Delilah’s original itinerary. A list of the people she met with. Transcripts of my conversations with that detestable Condesta’s representatives. Photos of and information about the compound in Santa Marita where she’s being held. Oh, and a photo of her, of course.”
“This should be very helpful.” Dom took the proffered envelope and set it down in front of him. “First, however, I think we’d better establish what, exactly, you want me to do. Take over negotiations? Handle the exchange?”
To his immense gratification, she snorted and said briskly, “Certainly not. I have lawyers to do those things. Lawyers and advisers and business managers, whom I allowed, against my better judgment, to convince me that dealing with Delilah’s captors was the right thing to do…” She trailed off, then squared her shoulders and ratcheted up her already ramrod posture. “I may be old, Mr. Steele, but I’m not stupid, at least not often, and I don’t care for extortion. I want you to go to San Timoteo and bring Delilah home where she belongs.”
He did his best to squelch an inner cheer. “Okay. But there are still things we need to discuss.”
Her mouth curved in a moue of annoyance. “If this is about your fee—”
“No, ma’am,” he assured her. “I’m sure you’re good for it.” He swallowed a grin at her huff of indignation, then got down to business. “What I want is some insight into your granddaughter. Is she a leader or a follower? Easygoing or high-strung? Quick off the mark or more of a deep thinker?”
“Why on earth do you need to know all that?” she snapped.
“Well, let’s see.” He lazily drummed his fingertips against the tabletop. “I guess because it would be helpful to know what to expect. Is she likely to scream or faint when I show up? Will she feel compelled to offer her opinion about every move I make, or will she do what she’s told? Is she going to get hysterical if we have to make a run for it and she breaks a nail?”
Abigail’s icy blue eyes glinted. “You may count on Delilah to behave sensibly, Mr. Steele. I didn’t raise her to indulge in histrionics. She’s a level-headed, responsible young woman as befits her station, and I can assure you she understands that sometimes duty—or circumstance—requires one to subvert one’s emotions and do what needs to be done.”
“Okay,” he said mildly. “But if she’s such a paragon of virtue, then how’d she wind up enjoying Condesta’s enforced hospitality?”
“I never claimed my granddaughter was perfect,” she said stiffly, raising her already elevated chin another fraction. “For all her many sterling qualities, once in a while, on exceedingly rare occasions, Delilah can be unexpectedly…stubborn.
“This trip was a perfect example. Although it could easily have been handled by one of the staff, whom we pay to do this sort of thing, and despite the fact that she has countless obligations that require her attention at home, she insisted on personally going to San Timoteo to inspect a school that had applied to the Anson Foundation, a nonprofit organization my late father started, for funding.
“As I understand it, once her business was completed she decided to attend some sort of local celebration. It got out of hand, the police were called in and when the young man she was with was threatened with arrest—” her lips tightened “—Delilah foolishly objected.”
Dominic nodded. The granddaughter might be a few years older and a little less flaky than he’d initially envisioned, but the rest of the story was still pretty much what he’d expected—a classic case of Rich Person Behaving Badly. “So how do you think she’s holding up?”
“I’m sure she’s managing. The Anson blood runs in her veins,” the old lady said coolly, as if that said it all.
And maybe it did, Dom decided. At least it didn’t sound as if the granddaughter was likely to wilt like a hothouse flower at her first sight of him. Or complain endlessly about his choices and methods, or because he hadn’t brought her champagne and caviar or her own private masseuse.
Not that he’d ever intended not to rescue her if given the opportunity. Even if Mrs. Sommers had revealed that her darling Delilah had all the charm of a polecat on steroids, he’d planned all along to go to San Timoteo to relieve El Presidente of his unwilling guest.
But he wasn’t a fool. For all his no-sweat approach to life, he believed in doing things right. And in the security business, that meant careful planning and meticulous preparation, which meant obtaining all the information you could.
Still, it was probably past time to end the suspense and let Queen Abigail know he was willing to save her bacon, so to speak. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Excellent!” Mrs. Sommers abruptly appeared years younger, for the first time revealing the genuine concern hidden beneath her crusty exterior. “How soon can you leave?”
“Sometime in the next forty-eight hours. Let me look this over—” he tapped the envelope “—make some calls and I’ll get back to you later today with any other questions that crop up and a more definitive timetable.”
“Excellent,” she repeated. Grasping her purse, she started to stand.
Already formulating a list of things he needed to do, he pushed to his feet. Once again, Dom and his new client shook hands and then Gabe offered his arm to escort her from the room. The two were almost to the door when Dom reached in and drew out the sheaf of papers. Paper-clipped to the top was a five-by-seven color photo. He glanced at it.
A shock like the blast from a stun gun jolted through him.
“This is your granddaughter? Lilah Cantrell?” Damned if his voice didn’t come out in a croak.
Mrs. Sommers turned, still graceful despite her years. “Delilah, yes. Her father was the product of my union with my second husband, James.”
He fought to keep his expression neutral. It took only a second for him to realize why he hadn’t made the connection: when he’d known Lilah, her grandmother’s name hadn’t been either Sommers or Cantrell, and the family mansion had been referred to as—he racked his brain, and suddenly he had it—the Trayburne estate.
But even so…He felt Gabriel’s sudden scrutiny like a touch. Yet Gabe being Gabe, his brother didn’t let on. “Come along, Abigail,” the other man said smoothly. “Margaret has the paperwork you need to sign at the front desk.”
The second they’d cleared the threshold, Dom turned his attention back to the glossy studio image clutched in his hand. A fine-boned blonde with china-blue eyes, a tantalizing mouth and an expression both reserved and challenging looked back at him.
Well, hell. Delilah Sommers was actually Lilah Cantrell. And despite her grandmother’s claims to the contrary, Lilah was every inch a self-centered society princess.
That he knew from personal experience.
Because Lilah Cantrell was the first—and only—woman he’d ever fallen hard for. The one woman he’d never been able to predict. The only woman ever to have shown him the door before he’d been sure he was ready to go.
And definitely the last woman on earth he’d deliberately seek out.
He uttered the first half of Gabe’s earlier curse.
“Something wrong?”
He jerked his head up, startled to find his older brother standing in the doorway watching him.
He immediately blanked his face. “No.”
And there wasn’t, he told himself firmly, shoving the picture back into the envelope. So what if he’d just agreed—no, insisted—on not just seeking Lilah out, but being allowed the privilege of saving her shapely little prima donna butt? He was a pro and he intended to act like it.
After all, the past was just that—the past. And he and Li had been barely more than kids at the time of their clichéd summer fling. What’s more, he’d known from the start they had no future. If in the intervening years he’d occasionally thought about her with a pang of regret, it was only because the sex had been incredible. Hell, more than incredible. Maybe the best of his life—
“You sure you’re all right?”
Gabe’s question yanked him back to reality. He thought about it for all of half a second and then felt a genuine smile form on his lips. “Yeah, I am. Why wouldn’t I be? I get to leave this Popsicle weather, go where I can work on my tan and foil some bad guys in the bargain. Plus we get paid for it.
“Trust me, bro. I can handle it.”
Three
“So you do this for a living?” Lilah’s eyebrows, shades darker than her pale hair, rose eloquently. “You—your brothers—are mercenaries?”
Apparently he hadn’t explained things as well as he’d thought. Just as this particular rescue mission wasn’t turning out to be the cakewalk he’d predicted.
That didn’t mean he had to stand here and let her get things wrong. “No,” Dom said flatly. “Mercenary implies no standards, no ethics, no values, no rules—and we stand for all those things. We don’t break U.S. law, we don’t work for anybody who isn’t one hundred per cent legit. Trust me. We can afford to be choosy.”
He refrained from adding that, in his opinion, he and his brothers had a lot in common with the guy whose nickname they shared, the one with the red cape and big S on his chest. Like him, they believed in justice and cared enough to risk their lives for it.
What’s more, unlike the majority of the populace, they’d all honorably served their country; every one of them was former military Special Operations and had put in their time on numerous tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and even darker corners of the world.
To her credit, Lilah appeared to get the message. She worried her bottom lip for an instant, then seemed to catch herself. Squaring her shoulders, she forced herself to meet his gaze head-on. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything…negative. Or—or to suggest I’m not glad you’re here. I am. It’s just…it’s unexpected.”
He couldn’t argue with that. “Don’t worry about it.”
God knew, he didn’t intend to. After all, it looked as if things were finally going his way. And that was good, since for a while, he had half-seriously started to think of this job as the Extraction from Hell.
First, his flight into San Timoteo had been diverted. Then, when he’d finally gotten wheels down, he’d found his local contact had vanished. Which was why it had taken him a frustrating thirty-odd hours to discover that: (A) Lilah wasn’t where she was supposed to be; (B) that once he had located her—here, at what the locals called Las Rocas, an isolated, heavily guarded compound sixty-five rugged, sparsely inhabited miles from Santa Marita, the nation’s capital and only large city—his best bet of getting her out was to get himself thrown in; and (C) the best way to do that involved volunteering to get his ass kicked.
Complicating matters further, his satellite phone had been confiscated by San Timotean customs and the last intel he’d received had warned that a big storm was due in at the end of the week. What’s more, thanks to this required detour to the island’s remote south coast, he and Lilah had missed their scheduled ride out of the country. So now, in addition to everything else, he was going to have to improvise that part of the rescue plan, too.
But then, he liked to improvise. And he was good at it. Good enough that, so far as he could see, there was now only one problem that might really give him grief.
And she was standing a few feet away.
Hell he’d forgotten just how pretty Lilah was. Damned if she still didn’t look just like the Disney version of Cinderella, all gilt hair and big blue eyes and the sort of skin you usually only saw in body lotion commercials.
Unfortunately—at least as far as he was concerned—unlike a proper G-rated fairy-tale heroine, she was also hot. She’d been hot at eighteen and, if his current itchy-fingered reaction to her was any indication, the subsequent years hadn’t done a thing to dim her fire.
Not that there was anything blatant about it. Or her. Far from it. She had a way about her, all elegant carriage and air of restraint that made a guy think of garden parties and symphony openings, not mud wrestling and strip joints.
And that was a big part of the problem. Call him perverse, but at age twenty it had been her look-but-don’t-touch demeanor that had first attracted him. He’d always loved a challenge—still did—and her sorority girl air of being unattainable had been like a red flag snapped in a bull’s face. All it had taken to hook him had been one look. After that, the only thing he’d been able to think about was sinking his fingers into her pale silky hair, cradling her close and kissing the primness right off that delectable mouth.
Of course, that’d been then and this was now. He was thirty years old. A man, not a boy. And she hadn’t just burned him all those years ago, she’d barbecued him. Which was not an experience he had any intention of repeating.
So how to explain the gut-wrenching, skin-tightening, gotta-have-some-of-that desire that had blasted through him the instant she’d laid her hands on him earlier?
“I just want to be sure I understand,” Lilah said, mercifully interrupting his thoughts.
Well, yeah. That makes two of us, sweetheart. I’d like to understand how I can be standing here thinking of all the different ways I’d like to have wild, swing-from-the-chandeliers sex with you when I haven’t seen you in ten years.
“Gran came to your office and hired you to rescue me?”
“That’s right.”
“And your brother has worked for her in the past. That’s why she went to him and how you came to be here?”
“More or less.”
“And after we…knew…each other you left Denver and joined the Navy?”
“Yeah. Now, if you don’t mind, we don’t have a lot of time before the sun goes down and the guards bring dinner, so let me ask the questions.” He’d think about his backstabbing libido later. Say back in Denver. Over a tall cool one at his favorite tavern. In the year 2025. For now, it was time to get down to business.
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Know what?”
“About dinner.”
He reminded himself to be patient, that it was understandable she’d have questions. “Because I spent yesterday surveilling this place. There’s a big tree about five hundred feet from the compound entrance. It’s tall enough that I could see them ferrying food from the kitchen. Now I need you to tell me whether they come back after dinner to pick up your plate or wait until morning.”
“So far, they’ve always left it until morning.”
“Good. Do you see anybody in between time? Do they do a bed check or come in when the guard changes shifts?”
“No. Why?”
“Because.” He felt for the opening in the seam of his pants just below his hip. “If that’s the case, then once the food comes we essentially become invisible until dawn. And I plan on us being gone from here way before then.”
Disbelief—and a gleam of longing?—flashed in her eyes. Yet she was too well-schooled to expose her emotions longer than that single moment. “Well, yes, that would be nice. But short of dematerializing and squeezing through the bars—” her voice was suddenly cool and uninflected “—I don’t see how you’re going to accomplish that. And even if you could, you’d still have to get the corridor door unbolted and then get past the guards you’re so intent on avoiding. Somehow I don’t see any of that happening.”
He pulled the thigh-length, razor-thin cutting blade free from its hiding place. “Neither do I. That’s why we’re not going out that way.”
“We’re not?” Lilah’s lips parted in astonishment.
And just like that, that prickly wanna-touch sensation washed over him. Because she really did have the most luscious mouth….
“No, we’re not,” he said firmly, forcing himself to concentrate on their surroundings, to triple-check that he hadn’t overlooked anything, even though the layout was already firmly inscribed on his brain. Located on a windswept headland on San Timoteo’s southern tip, the cell block occupied the far end of the walled-off compound that was also home to a commandant’s residence and modest barracks.
The jail itself was the shape of a basic rectangle. At the top of the shorter, western wall was a solid iron door that opened from a guard house into a narrow corridor boasting a single small, skinny window. The corridor, roughly five feet by forty, fronted four small, barred cells that were identical in size and shared a common solid back wall. Their only other notable feature was their utter lack of creature comforts.
Deciding the surroundings were stark enough to depress even his overly active libido, Dom returned his gaze to Lilah.
Who’d taken yet another step back from the bars and was now standing in the sole shaft of sunlight, allowing him to see what he’d missed before due to the deep shadows that draped the room like a heavy blanket.
A smudge of bruises circled her right wrist, a larger contusion ran from shoulder to elbow on her opposite arm, and a fading but still telltale smear of yellow-tinged purple marred one side of her jaw.
The sight made him go cold. Suddenly wishing he could turn back time and have a real go at the sons-of-bitches guards instead of pulling his punches the way he had when he’d let them overpower him, he struggled to contain his anger and keep it out of his voice. “Lilah.”
His voice may have sounded normal, but clearly something—the rigidness of his stance, the muscle that had twitched to life in his jaw—must have tipped her off to his sudden tension because she went very still. “What?
“Did they hurt you?” he asked softly.
“Hurt me?” Despite her cautious response, the fingers of her right hand reflexively touched her battered wrist, revealing she knew what had prompted the question.
“Were you raped?”
Abruptly, her expression cleared. “No.” She shook her head. “No. I’m not positive, but I think El Presidente issued orders that I was off-limits…that way.”
“Oh, yeah? Why would he do that?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe because he only wants my money.”
“So the bruises are from what?” he persisted.
“This—” she indicated the area above her hand and gave a little shrug “—one of the guards got a little rough. The rest—” inexplicably, a faint flush colored the curve of her elegant cheekbones “—are from when I was being held in Santa Marita. There was a car accident. Well, I suppose accident might not be exactly the correct term—”
“But nobody forced themselves on you?” he interrupted, wanting—needing—to be sure.
“No.”
“Okay, then. That’s…good.” As if his vision had suddenly improved—maybe he’d taken a harder hit to the head than he’d thought—he now saw that in addition to having been roughed up, she was on the brink of being not slender but fragile, the kind of look people got when they’d gone too long without adequate food.
The discovery didn’t improve his temper. He wanted her out of here now. Even more than he wanted a piece of the guards, and he wanted that pretty damn bad.
The fierceness of his feelings caught him off guard, but he’d think about it later. Over that beer he planned to drink back home. Without a certain blue-eyed, satin-skinned blonde to distract him and make him crave things he didn’t need.
“If we’re not leaving through the door, how do you plan to get us out of here?” Lilah asked.
She was nothing if not persistent. “If I tell you, will you stop with the Twenty Questions?”
“Yes, of course. I—”
“Deal,” he said flatly, cutting her off. “To answer your question—we’re going out through the hole I’m going to cut through the wall.”
Lilah watched in shock as Dominic turned his back on her. Stepping close to the expanse of rough gray concrete that formed the back of the cell block, he began to run his hands over it like a blind man exploring a lover’s face.
A score of questions screamed for answers in her head, competing for space with a dozen exclamations. The two common themes seemed to be “how on earth?” and “you’re out of your mind.”
Yet his silence, combined with his averted back, made it perfectly clear he didn’t want to talk.
Well, neither did she, Lilah thought, retreating to her bed. She could use some time to think. And to sift through all the contradictory emotions that were bouncing around inside her like rubber balls in a cement mixer.
She was barely settled, however, and nowhere close to sorting through the jumble of doubt, hope, fear and frustration vying for her attention, when the sound of the bolt being drawn in the outer door splintered the silence.
Her gaze snapped to Dominic. In the fraction of time it took for the door to swing open, her jailmate whirled and slid down the wall to sit in a crumpled heap on the floor, his arms dangling limply, his eyes shut, his head flopped to one side.
If she hadn’t known better, she’d have believed he was an injured man just barely holding on to consciousness. Heaven knew, the guard certainly bought it. Flicking the big American a dismissive look, he said something clearly contemptuous in San Timoteo’s version of Spanish as he headed for Lilah’s cell.
To her surprise, Dom answered back, his voice slurred convincingly.
The guard laughed. The sound was ugly, as was the lecherous look he sent Lilah’s way as he stooped down and slid the small tin plate clutched in his meaty hand through the gap at the base of the bars. He stood and spoke again, blew her a noisy kiss, then strolled back out the door.
The second the sound of the bolt sliding into place faded, Dominic straightened. “Bastard,” he bit out, his voice low but lethal.
Curiosity overcame Lilah’s earlier pique. “What did he say?”
“Nothing you need to hear.”
She pursed her lips. It was hardly the response she’d been seeking, but at least he was talking to her again. “I never knew you spoke Spanish.”
“I learned as a SEAL.” He hitched his muscular shoulders a fraction of an inch in one of his trademark shrugs. “Turns out languages are easy for me.”
“Oh.”
His gaze flicked to the plate. “You should eat.”
She considered the meager portion of beans and flat bread. The food was an unappetizing shade of gray, and she knew from experience it looked far better than it tasted. Even so, the sight of it made her stomach squeeze and her mouth water.
Yet how could she eat when he didn’t? “We’ll share it.”
His reply was immediate and forceful. “No. We won’t. You need it a hell of a lot more than I do.”
He clearly didn’t intend to budge. Since arguing would no doubt be fruitless, Lilah dutifully stood and retrieved the plate. She picked up the crude wooden spoon, unhurriedly ate exactly half of what was there, then walked over and slid the plate under the narrow gap between the floor and the bars.
Without a word, she went back to her bed. When she turned, he was giving her a hard look. She gazed unflinchingly back.
With a curse that made her wince, he reached for the plate, jerked it close, and ate.
“Do you really think you can hack through solid concrete with that flimsy bar?” she asked a moment later as he mopped up the last morsel of beans with the last scrap of bread. “And what about the guards? Won’t somebody outside notice what’s going on?”
“The wall’s aren’t made out of concrete. They’re made out of concrete block,” he corrected, climbing to his feet. “Cemented together with a local mortar, which is made out of straw and mud, and which is what I intend to go after. My flimsy little bar, in contrast, is made of a space-age titanium alloy ten times stronger than tempered steel. And nobody’s going to see what’s happening because the back wall’s built right on the edge of a drop. So yeah. I think my plan will work.”
He walked over and chucked the empty plate at the outer door with a fierceness that startled her. Yet when he turned, he appeared calm and in control, and when he spoke it was with an easy confidence she wanted desperately to believe in. “Give me a little credit, okay? I didn’t just get myself tossed in here hoping an idea would come to me. I know what I’m doing.”
“Yes, of course,” she said faintly. He might look like the boy she’d known, but clearly he was all grown-up. What’s more, he was right. He was her best, her only, hope of escape and questioning him at every turn wasn’t doing either of them any good.
“And now, since our hosts really don’t seem inclined to check up on us despite my bad manners—” he slid his blade free of its hiding place and once more headed for the back of his cell “—I might as well start. Why don’t you try to get some rest? You’re going to need it for later.”
She was being dismissed. Again. Yet this time she didn’t take offense, simply did as he suggested and laid down. Partly because there was nothing to be gained by arguing, but mostly because between the heat, the lack of nutrition and the internal uproar his presence caused her, she was worn out.
She curled on her side, tucked a hand beneath her cheek and lowered her lashes, pretending not to watch as he started his assault on the wall, using his handy-dandy blade thingy to hack away at the mortar.
God help her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him. And it wasn’t only because of the mesmerizing way his back and shoulder muscles bunched and shifted with his every move.
No, it was also because of her realization that she’d been fooling herself for years, believing the picture she carried of him in her mind was accurate.
It hadn’t been. She knew that now; the proof was right in front of her. At some point in the passage of time, she’d clearly forgotten just how vividly alive he was. Just as she’d forgotten that when she was in his presence, the whole world seemed sharper, brighter and infinitely more interesting.
It had been that way from the very first time she’d laid eyes on him, she thought, remembering….
Once again, it was a hot, lazy June day. She lay languidly on a chaise longue by the swimming pool at Cedar Hill, the palatial Denver estate owned by her grandmother’s newest husband.
Off in the distance, she heard the distinctive whine of an approaching lawn mower and ridiculously, her pulse skittered. Grateful for the camouflage of her sunglasses, she casually shifted her head to the left toward the emerald swath of the five-acre back lawn. She was rewarded for her effort by the sight of a tall, bronzed young man cutting the grass.
She’d first noticed him the previous week; he wasn’t the regular lawn man, and a casual inquiry of Mr. Tomkins, who looked after the pool, had provided her with the information that he was a vacation fill-in.
Whatever the reason for his presence, with his broad shoulders and confident swagger, he was hard to miss. She knew he’d noticed her, too. Unlike the well-mannered boys she was accustomed to, he’d stared boldly at her, his gaze lingering in a way she’d told herself was totally annoying.
Which hardly explained why she’d been lying here for the past hour, hoping to get another glimpse of him. Or why just looking at him now made her throat feel tight. Nor did she understand the panic that bloomed inside her when, as if he’d sensed her regard, he abruptly brought the lawn mower to a halt, shut off the engine and began to walk toward her, his long legs rapidly eating up the distance between them.
Before she could act on a sudden impulse to flee, he was standing at the wrought iron fence that encircled the pool. “Hey.”
For a moment she couldn’t move. Then, driven by pride and an abruptly awakened sense of self-preservation that warned he was a threat—although to what she couldn’t clearly pinpoint—she slowly sat up. “May I help you?” She used her best drawing room voice in a desperate bid to hide the way her heart was pounding.
“Yeah.” He flashed her a smile that made her stomach flip. “Would you mind getting me a glass of water?”
A bead of sweat tracked down the column of his neck, adding to the damp that made his black T-shirt cling to his muscled chest, and an unfamiliar heat twisted through her. Embarrassed, she reached up and slid her sunglasses off, using the action as an excuse to look away. “Pardon me?”
“I’m thirsty. You don’t seem to be doing anything, so if you wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate you getting me a drink.”
Her gaze snapped back to him as she tried to decide which was more unsettling: his nerve or her realization that an unfamiliar part of her wanted to do his bidding. “I don’t think so.” She picked up her book and sat back, waiting for him to take offense and stalk away.
He didn’t. Instead, he cocked a hip and leaned closer, muscles flexing as he rested his tanned dusty arms against the top of the fence. “Aw, come on. You’re not too good to mix with the hired help, are you?”
Stung that he’d think such a thing, she ratcheted her chin up a notch. “Of course not.”
He raised one straight, inky eyebrow. “So what’s the problem?”
Their gazes locked. To her fascination, his eyes, which she’d expected to be dark due to his near-black hair and olive complexion were a clear compelling green. And his mouth looked hard and soft all at the same time, the lips full and….
She scrambled to her feet, appalled by the direction of her thoughts. Tossing her long braid over her shoulder, she marched over to the wet bar and filled a tall glass with icy water from the tap, staunchly ignoring the fact that her hands were shaking. Head high, she stalked back to the fence and thrust the tumbler at him. “Here.”
He took her offering with lazy grace, purposefully brushing his rough, calloused fingers against hers in the exchange. Raising the glass, he tipped back his head and drank, his strong, smooth-skinned throat rippling. She waited, unable to look away, as he licked the last bead of moisture from his lips once he’d drained the glass. “Thanks.” He handed her back the glass.
Her own throat felt dust dry. “You’re welcome. Now please go away.”
He acted as if he hadn’t heard her. “My name’s Dominic. Dominic Steele. What’s yours?”
“I see no reason for you to know that,” she said coolly.
“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. After all—” his gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth, lingered, then unhurriedly came back up “—how can I ask you out if I don’t know your name?”
If she had any sense, she’d walk away. Yet she stood rooted to the spot. Silence stretched between them. Then she heard herself say in a breathy way that was totally unlike her, “It’s Lilah…Cantrell.”
“Lilah,” he repeated. “That’s perfect. A pretty name for a pretty girl.” The faintest of smiles crinkled the corners of his vivid eyes and her knees instantly went weak. “Come on, Lilah, go out with me. Please?”
She knew she should say no. She could just imagine her grandmother’s reaction to her dating someone from the lawn service. Then again, Gran was gone for the rest of the summer on her honeymoon cruise. And except for the staff, Lilah was alone, as usual, the weeks until her sophomore years at Stanford started stretching interminably before her.
Still, except on rare occasions, such as last winter’s charity cotillion and her senior high school prom, she didn’t really care to date. She’d always found the opposite sex to be either crass or boring, or both.
Dominic Steele was neither. In the past five minutes, he’d managed to turn her ordered world upside down—surprising, annoying, intriguing and charming her all at the same time. Which was no doubt why what was left of her common sense was shrilly insisting that nothing good could come from the pull she felt merely standing close to him.
The prudent thing to do was say no.
Oh, come on, whispered an unfamiliar little voice in her head. Aren’t you just a little tired of always doing the right thing? Of forever being the straight-A student, the dutiful granddaughter? After all, you’re not a child any longer. And no matter what Gran says, you’re nothing like your mother—
“You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
Her spine stiffened automatically. “Please,” she said with a faint sniff.
“So prove it.” He looked at her expectantly.
“Oh, very well.” She did her best to sound blasé, but it was hard to do with her heart thundering like a drum solo. “I suppose I could rearrange my schedule.”
Satisfaction flashed across his face. “Great. I’ll pick you up at eight.” He turned to walk away, then twisted back around. “Oh, and Lilah?”
“What?”
“Wear pants.”
“Why?”
His expression turned enigmatic. “You’ll find out tonight.” As assured as a prince, he strode away, leaving her to stare after him, already questioning the wisdom of what she’d done.
She got her first inkling of what she was in for when he’d roared up the drive that night on a gleaming black motorcycle.
Grateful again that Gran was away, Lilah had reluctantly allowed Dominic to coax her onto the back of the bike. Once there, she’d found she had no choice but to wrap her arms around his lean hard middle, press her cheek against the warm hollow between his shoulder blades and trust him to keep her safe.
Looking back later, she’d been able to see that their ride that night had been the perfect metaphor for the relationship that followed. It had been wild, scary, exciting and exhilarating, with Dominic taking her places she’d never been before.
Within hours, she’d begun to fall in love with him. Within days they’d become lovers. And after that….
“Li? You awake?”
With a start, she opened her eyes. She blinked, surprised to find that while she’d been strolling down memory lane, night had fallen. The cell block was cloaked in darkness except for a single weak arrow of light streaming in the small barred window. It was just enough illumination to reveal Dominic standing over her. Startled, disoriented, suddenly not sure she wasn’t dreaming, she gazed up at him. “But…how did you get in here?”
“Lock pick. In my boot.” He held out his hand. “Come on. It’s time to get the hell out of Dodge.” Hard and calloused, his fingers closed around hers.
She drew in a sharp breath at the contact. Climbing unsteadily to her feet, she struggled to come to grips with the shift from weeks of waiting to sudden action. By the time her head had cleared, he’d led her out of her cell and into his.
She continued to follow him, her gaze locked on the solid outline of his back, when, without warning, he stepped to one side.
She rocked to a halt, a stiff salt breeze slapping her in the face, and stared at the man-sized opening that now gaped in the previously solid, seemingly impregnable wall. Beyond it stretched nothing but a vast black sky littered with glittering silver stars.
“Dear God.” With a start, she remembered he’d said something about a drop, but she’d never, ever, imagined this.
She took a cautious step forward, craned her neck and looked down. There, so far below it looked to be miles away, the ocean rolled in with an impressive crash as it met the perpendicular cliff face. “You can’t be serious. This is your escape route?”
“That’s right.” Unlike the water, Dominic was suddenly far too close. His breath washed over her temple and every sensitive inch of skin on her body had goose bumps.
She tried to ignore her rapidly disintegrating nerves. “It’s got to be at least a hundred-foot drop.”
“More like fifty.”
“But how are we going to get down?”
“Easy.” All of a sudden, the lazy humor was back in his voice. “We’re going to jump.”
For a second, Lilah was sure she hadn’t heard correctly; then she was afraid she had. “You’re kidding, right?
“Nope.”
“But that’s crazy! If the fall doesn’t kill us, getting dashed by the tide against the cliff will do the job. That is, if we haven’t already hit a submerged rock!”
“No rocks,” he said calmly. “The tide’s on its way out. And the waves sound a lot worse than they really are. It’s a clean shot down, with more than enough depth to be safe. I checked.”
He’d checked. The knowledge brought reassurance, which was crazy in itself. If ever there was a man not to trust, he was the one.
Yet it wasn’t as if she really had a choice, she realized. Not anymore. She didn’t want to think what would happen if they were still here when the guards showed up in the morning and saw Dominic’s handiwork.
“Look,” he said quietly, his face in shadow, which only served to make his voice even more compelling, “I know you’ve always had a thing about heights—”
“No. It’s all right. If you—if this—” she stopped, swallowed, reached down deep to steady herself “—if this is what we have to do, this is what we have to do.”
He moved out of the darkness and into the moonlight, an odd expression on his face that she couldn’t identify. “You mean I’m not going to have to tie you up and gag you to get you to jump?”
She shivered at the picture his words conjured. “No,” she said quickly.
“Too bad.” That crooked, cocky grin that had always made her stomach flip-flop flashed across his handsome face. “Then let’s do it.”
“Now?” She took an involuntary step back.
“Yeah. Now.” Before she could retreat farther, he reached out and wrapped his arms around her.
For a moment, the shock of his embrace was so overwhelming she forgot to be afraid.
And then she forgot to be anything else as he lifted her off her feet, took two powerful steps through the crude doorway he’d created and vaulted them out into the wind-whipped void.
Four
The night breeze danced through the palm trees that fringed the small cove, while the moon played hide-and-seek with a flotilla of clouds. Still, the silvery orb provided sufficient light to guide Dominic and Lilah as they waded through the surf toward the shallows and the tiny sliver of beach beyond.
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Caroline Cross
She had trusted him wtih her heart and been devestated. Now she had to trust him with her life. Lilah Cantrell: She couldn't imagine anything worse than being held in a Third World prison. Until she set eyes on Dominic Steele–the very first man who'd stirred her desires and broken her heart.Dominic Steele: The ex-U.S. Navy Seal turned bodyguard-for-hire tried to keep his rescue mission strictly professional, but Lilah–and the memories of their shared history–awakened his long-dormant protective instincts…and passion. Could their newfound trust, born of desperation, sustain them once they reached safety? Or was that when the real danger would begin?
Trust Me
Caroline Cross
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This is a book about second chances.
I owe mine to two terrific editors, Julie Barrett and
Melissa Jeglinski. Thanks for giving me the chance to
write this book and for always making me look better.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
One
The shriek of the bolt being drawn in the cell block door shattered the sultry afternoon silence.
Lilah jerked her head up. For a second, she remained frozen. Then she scrambled upright, scooted to the far edge of the thin mat that served as her bed and pressed herself back against the rough concrete wall. She braced herself as the door at the end of the corridor crashed open.
Against a dim spill of light, a pair of jail guards staggered into sight. A man hung limply between them. His head lolled. His feet trailed in the dust. As the guards dragged him forward, Lilah stared at tanned, muscular arms, the hard biceps stretching the sleeves of a faded olive T-shirt. At inky hair that gleamed even in the murky illumination. At the trickle of blood beading at the edge of a determined mouth.
With a long-suffering grunt, the jailers hoisted their burden a little higher. The prisoner’s head tilted sideways, allowing her a quick view of a straight blade of a nose and the strong clean line of a cheekbone.
All of which abruptly seemed familiar.
Her heart leapt even as her mind reeled. No. It can’t be. What would the love of her reckless youth, the masculine yardstick against whom she’d once measured all others, the man who at times still invaded her sleep and hijacked her dreams—what would he be doing here, in the farthest reaches of the Caribbean, in remote San Timoteo, at one of El Presidente’s private jails?
Her mind must’ve snapped. It was the only explanation that made sense, Lilah decided. She’d tried to be brave, to hold on and be strong, but finally she’d lost it. What’s worse, she was hallucinating.
And yet….
The guards dumped the newcomer onto the adjoining cell’s concrete floor. One of them lingered long enough to give their newest captive a vicious kick to the ribs, then exited, slamming first the cell door and then the corridor door behind him.
Every nerve in Lilah’s body screamed for action. Yet the harsh lessons of the past month had reinforced her innate sense of caution. Ignoring the pounding of her heart, she forced herself to stay where she was, to wait for the sounds of the bolt slamming home and her captors’ footsteps receding. Then, unable to remain still another instant, she launched herself off the bed and across the cell.
She reached the unyielding metal bars, her gaze locked on her fellow prisoner’s face as she slid to her knees. Her pulse thrummed wildly in her ears as she studied the straight eyebrows, the strong chin and the killer cheekbones.
This close, there could be no doubt. The years may have added width to his shoulders, heft to his muscles, a few character lines to his handsome face, but it was him.
Dominic Devlin Steele.
Stunned, she tried to think. What on earth could he be doing here? Was it sheer coincidence? An incredible twist of fate?
That hardly seemed probable. Yet the only other explanation was that he was here deliberately, and the only person likely to orchestrate that would be her grandmother. Try as she might, Lilah couldn’t imagine a world where Abigail Anson Clarke Cantrell Trayburne Sommers’s path would cross Dominic Steele’s.
Much less why he’d agree to put himself in harm’s way for her.
Then she realized none of it mattered. After a month of fear, loneliness and growing desperation, it was simply wonderful to see a familiar face. Even his.
Especially his.
She reached through the bars. “Dominic? It’s me. Lilah. Lilah Cantrell.” Fingers trembling, she touched her hand to his cheek.
On some marginal level, she registered that his skin was reassuringly warm. That the faint prickle of his beard against her palm tickled. And that nearly a decade had done nothing to dim the hot little thrill of pleasure that touching him brought her.
But mostly her focus was all on the fact that he was far, far too still. “I can’t believe it’s really you. That you’re here, of all places. The thing is, you need to wake up. Wake up and talk to me. Or at least stop being so still. Please?”
He didn’t stir. Biting her bottom lip, she tried to decide what to do now, only to have panic flood her when she realized she didn’t have a clue. Her fright gave birth to a lump in her throat and the next thing she knew, she had to press her lips together to muffle a sudden sob.
Her weakness shamed her. So what if seeing someone—anything—familiar emphasized how demoralizing the past month’s incarceration had been? So what if she’d begun to lose hope that she’d ever see home again? Or that, as hard as she’d tried to convince herself it didn’t matter, she’d started to wonder whether she’d even be missed?
She was a Cantrell. Ever since she could remember she’d been warned against the dangers of self-indulgence, the perils of losing control.
More to the point, you aren’t the one lying bruised and unconscious on a dirty floor. She should be focused on how to aid Dominic, not kneeling and wringing her hands like a vapid heroine in a B movie. She could just imagine what Gran would say. “For heaven’s sake, child!” the familiar, autocratic voice declared impatiently in her head. “Quit your sniveling and at least try to live up to your family name!”
Like a dash of cold water, imagining her grandmother’s disdain steadied her. Swallowing hard, Lilah took a deep breath to force back the tidal wave of emotion that had so nearly swamped her. To her relief, the tightness in her throat eased and her hands quit shaking. Heartened, she wasted no time turning her attention back to Dominic.
First things first, she decided. She’d do her best to see if she could pinpoint where he was injured; then she’d worry about what to do about it.
She set about examining him. Careful to keep her touch as light as a kiss of sunlight, she skimmed her fingertips over those areas of his head and face that she could reach through the bars, checking for knots or blood or anything else that seemed out of place. Next came his neck and throat. Then she cautiously probed the side of him nearest to her, checking each rib, the long valley of his spine, the solid curves of arm and shoulder.
Nothing. Except for the heart-stopping discovery that he was all taut skin and steely muscle, exactly the way she remembered, she remained as clueless as she’d been minutes earlier about his possible injuries.
She fought the return of despair. “Come on, Nicky,” she whispered, her old pet name for him inadvertently slipping off her tongue as she rubbed the skin-warmed cotton of his shirt beneath her fingertips. “Quit playing around. I need you. I really, really need you. Wake up. Please please please wake up—”
“Jeez, Li. Chill.”
“Oh!” Her gaze jerked to Dominic’s face and she found herself staring into a pair of familiar grass-green eyes. “You’re awake!”
“Yeah.” He remained motionless, simply staring at her for several long seconds. Then he gingerly lifted his head an inch off the ground, gave it a slight, tentative shake and winced. “Lucky me.” He squeezed his eyes shut again, as if even the cell’s shadowy light was more than he could tolerate.
Lilah felt a fresh stab of alarm. What if he had a concussion or a skull fracture? Or—she recalled the boot to the side he’d taken and shuddered—broken ribs or a fractured spleen? Heaven help them both, he could have internal bleeding and not even know it. Her throat dry, she swallowed. “Where does it hurt?”
“Where doesn’t it?” he muttered. “Still—” he lifted an admonishing finger “—I’ve survived worse, so don’t go getting your panties in a twist, okay?” With a resigned-sounding sigh, he opened his eyes, raised himself up on his elbow and reached out to lay one large, warm hand over hers where it clutched the bars. “Trust me. I’m all right. I just need a minute.”
Trust me. The words washed over her, an echo from their past. How many times had he said just that, after daring her to do something dangerous, forbidden, but oh so tantalizing? How many times had she gazed into those fabulous eyes and lost a battle with temptation?
How many times had his touch made her brain fog while her body had come alive with desire?
Enough to remember him forever.
He released her hand unexpectedly to roll onto his side, breaking her wild thoughts. Grimacing, he flexed his jaw and touched an exploratory fingertip to his cut lip. He scrubbed the blood away with the back of his hand. Then, in one lithe move, he climbed to his feet.
Frozen in place, fighting to appear calm, she watched him take stock. His big muscular body bunched and flexed as he swiveled his head, rolled his shoulders, bounced lightly to test thighs, calves and knees. He rubbed briefly at a spot above his left pectoral and then sent her a pleased look. “Good news, princess. I think I’m gonna live.”
Princess. The intimate nickname, uttered in that casual, coolly amused tone of voice, felt like a slap to the face. Suddenly aware that she was still kneeling at his feet like some obedient harem girl, she scrambled up.
Oblivious to her, he took a slow look around, making a complete revolution as he took note of the solitary barred window set high in the far wall, the worn, wafer-thin woven pads atop the concrete slab ledges that passed for beds, the grate-covered holes that comprised the Third World bathroom facilities.
He gave a soundless whistle. “Man. You really must’ve pissed off the wrong person. I’ve seen prisons more cheerful than this.” His gaze swung back to her. For a second, something almost dangerous gleamed in his eyes and then his teeth flashed white, destroying that impression. “Wait. My mistake. This is a prison.”
He was making a joke. A joke. Here she’d been terrified out of her wits, afraid he might be irreparably injured, utterly overcome at seeing him again—and he was poking fun at their surroundings.
She stiffened. Humiliation warred with indignation, and indignation won. Not that she intended to let on. No way would she risk what little dignity she still possessed by letting on that he could still get to her.
Besides, she had bigger fish to fry, since his little inventory of his working body parts, coupled with his critique of the accommodations, had given her time to think.
“Your being here isn’t a coincidence, is it?” she said, recalling his first words to her and his utter lack of surprise at her presence in a desolate jail cell in an obscure little island country a million miles from home. “As a matter of fact,” she went on, ignoring his penetrating eyes to glance pointedly at the bruise starting to darken one strong cheekbone and the lip still oozing blood, “you deliberately did something to get yourself thrown in here because you knew this was where I was being held.”
Silence. Then his battered mouth quirked. “Score one for the rich girl.”
For a second, she had a powerful urge to hit him. Not that she had a hope of reaching him, but still….
Horrified, she took a firm grip on the bars that separated them, reminding herself yet again that she was a Cantrell and as such she would not, could not, lose her temper. Especially not now, when there was so much she burned to know. “How did you find me? How did you even know I was here in the first place? Did my grandmother send you? And why would you come? Why would you put yourself at risk like this?”
Logic insisted his presence simply couldn’t be a coincidence, but she still couldn’t seem to make sense of it.
After all, even ignoring the astronomical odds against him and her grandmother connecting, it had been ten years since his and Lilah’s last encounter. Ten years since she’d told him he’d better go and he’d looked at her with the same sort of nonchalant expression that currently graced his face. Ten years since he’d crushed her heart with a careless shrug and the comment that it was “her loss” before stalking out of her life forever.
Even now, the memory hurt. It made the past seem not so very long ago. As did the infuriating way he was currently considering her, so unruffled, so superior, so—so male. “Explain what you’re doing here. Now.”
“Tell you what, Li.” As cool as a wolf in winter, he padded over, braced his big hands above hers on the bars and leaned forward, his sheer size and proximity making her stomach tumble. “Do us both a favor, sweetheart. Take a deep breath, shut your pretty mouth and I’ll tell you everything I know.”
Two
Denver, Colorado
Five days earlier
“Hey.” Dominic ducked his head into his older brother’s spacious office at Steele Security headquarters. “You got a minute?”
Gabriel, who was seated at his granite-topped desk, glanced up, then resumed sorting through a stack of paperwork. “Sure. Come on in.”
Dom strolled across the flagstone floor. Like all the offices in the ultramodern, low-slung building tucked away in the city’s warehouse district, this one boasted a wall of glass that looked out on an interior courtyard. Today, as befitted January in the Rockies, the outside world was a brilliant sea of white, courtesy of the foot of fresh snow that had fallen overnight. “Taggart says we’re turning down a case.” After Gabe, Taggart was number two in the Steele brothers birth order hierarchy.
“That’s right.” Gabe’s tone was matter-of-fact. “The client’s coming in at two. I’m going to recommend she contact Allied.”
He stopped, rocking back on the heels of his Italian leather boots. “Why?”
“We don’t have the manpower.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” Gabe made a quick notation on a page and set it to one side. “Taggart thinks he may finally have a lead on the elusive Ms. Bowen. Josh is going to be tied up with the Romero trial in Seattle for at least two weeks, and everyone else is either hip deep in the Dallas industrial espionage case or working the economic summit in London. That leaves me, and as much as I wouldn’t mind some field work, I’m needed here at the moment.”
Dominic studied his brother. To an outsider, Gabe would no doubt appear calm and dispassionate, an image deliberately encouraged by his choice of attire—a starched white shirt, rep tie and severe charcoal suit that just happened to be polar opposites of Dom’s own laid-back black slacks and green linen shirt. Only someone who knew him well—like a brother—would be likely to notice the sudden tension lining his mouth and shadowing his eyes.
But then, both Gabe and Taggart were wound pretty tight; Dom had long ago concluded that his two older brothers had spent way too much time in the line of duty—no doubt at the old man’s command—and had missed out on hanging loose and living a little.
Not him. Dom had decided early on that life was too short to spend his time all stressed out worrying about things that might never happen and bracing for every possible disaster. Besides, somebody had to keep Steele One and Steele Two from imploding, and while Taggart was most likely a lost cause, Dom still had hopes for Gabe.
His esteemed older brother just needed an occasional reminder that the world wouldn’t end if he enjoyed himself once in a while. Or—he thought as he planted himself in one of the luxe leather chairs facing Gabe’s desk—didn’t try to stand in the way of somebody else enjoying himself.
“Okay, so everybody’s busy,” Dom said, stretching out his long legs. “What’s that make me? The invisible man?”
Gabe frowned down at the paper before him. “You’re still recovering. It’s only been two months since the shooting. You need more time.”
“No, I don’t. I feel fine. Hell, I feel more than fine. What with physical therapy, working on my house and all the time I’ve spent out on the course at Fort Carson, I’m in the best shape of my life. For sure I’m in better shape than some desk-riding cowboys I know.”
Gabe stoically ignored the insult. “Forget it.”
Dom considered his brother’s dismissive tone and reminded himself he was no longer the brash, hell-raising teenager who’d once felt compelled to challenge Gabe’s “I’m-four-years-older-than-you” authority.
Okay, so his big brother had founded Steele Security and been the driving force in establishing its reputation as a top-notch organization that could handle anything from high-profile protection to undercover investigations to locating missing persons. But Dom, along with Gabe, Taggart and two more of the nine Steele brothers, had since contributed to the company’s growing prestige and were now full partners in the enterprise.
As such, he got a say in things, whether Gabe liked it or not. “I don’t think I want to forget about it,” he said evenly.
Gabe slowly set down his pen. Raising his head, he met Dom’s direct gaze with one of his own. “Let me guess. You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
Dom grinned. “Not a chance. So you might as well tell me what’s going on and get it over with.”
For a very long moment, Gabe continued to stare at him. Then he gave an exaggerated sigh. “Aw, hell. You always have been pigheaded.” Reaching over, he snagged a file folder off the top of a stack to his left, speaking even as he thumbed it open. “The client is Abigail Sommers. I did protection work for her when I was first getting started. She was born an Anson, as in the Anson Mining Group, and over the course of eighty-odd years she’s single-handedly increased what was already a pretty sizable family fortune. Along the way, she’s outlived four husbands and both of her children.
“According to the message she left on my voice mail, her only grandchild is being detained in San Timoteo, an island nation—”
“—in the southern Caribbean. Run for the past dozen years by a corrupt ex-army general, Manolo Condesta, who insists on being called El Presidente.” With a chiding look, Dom tipped back his chair and folded his hands behind his head. “I’ve been living in London the past few years, Gabe, not on the moon. I’m up to speed on all the banana republics. I don’t need a lesson in geography or world politics.”
Gabe’s stern mouth tipped up the faintest fraction. “Got it. Sorry.”
Dom shrugged it off. “So what’s the grandkid accused of?”
His brother glanced down at the file, even though Dom knew very well all the information was already securely lodged in his encyclopedic memory. “Rioting, assaulting a policeman, resisting arrest.”
He gave a nod of understanding. It was an old story—spoiled rich kid takes a trip to a foreign country, gets drunk or stoned and does something obnoxious that pisses off the local officials.
“I’m surprised I haven’t heard a word about it in the press. Usually they love this stuff.”
Gabe nodded. “True. But Condesta’s got an iron grip on info going out of San Timoteo. And due to some bad tabloid press decades ago, Abigail is rabid about protecting her privacy. Everyone who works for her in any capacity signs a nondisclosure contract.”
“Okay, but from what I’ve heard about El Presidente, he’ll let people go for the right dollar amount. With all the money Mrs. Sommers has, she must have government contacts who can help?”
“Officially, the U.S. government has no relations with San Tim since it’s been added to the terrorist watch list. Unofficially, they’ve done what they could.
“Problem is, Condesta keeps upping the ante. Abigail said that twice he’s set a price, twice she’s agreed to pay it. And twice he’s changed his mind just hours before the scheduled exchange and demanded more. The asking price is now at one million, with no end in sight, and in the meantime her granddaughter’s been held for over four weeks.”
“Not good,” Dom repeated. While young Miss Sommers most likely was being confined someplace that more closely resembled a country club than Alcatraz, the hard truth was that women were vulnerable in ways men were not. “So what does the client want from us? More negotiations? An extraction?”
“I don’t know. All she said in her message was that the situation was untenable and something had to be done.”
“She’s right about that. And as of now, I’m the guy to do it.”
“No.” The eldest Steele closed the file as if that settled the matter.
“Yes.” His voice for once not the least bit amused, Dom straightened, bringing his chair down with a thump. “I don’t need a babysitter, Gabe. What I need is some action. Because if I have to spend another week sitting on my ass doing nothing but counting snowflakes, I’m likely to go tear up some Third World country myself.”
“Dammit, Dom—”
“Give it up, big brother. You did a hell of a job taking care of us after Mom died, but we’re all big boys now. We can take care of ourselves. Besides—” he forced himself to ease up and summoned an ironic smile “—as has been previously established, you are not, as the kids say these days, the boss of me. I’m going to San Timoteo, and that’s all there is to it.
“That being the case,” he went on without missing a beat as he picked up the file and climbed to his feet, “it appears I’ve got some reading to do, so I’ll let you get back to your paperwork. But I’ll see you and Mrs. Sommers in the conference room in—” he glanced at his watch “—an hour. Don’t be late.”
Just for a second, Gabriel’s green eyes narrowed dangerously. Then his expression unexpectedly relaxed and he unbent enough to murmur a caustic two-word epithet that started with an F and ended with a U.
Laughing, Dom headed for the door.
Abigail Anson Sommers didn’t look like anyone’s dear old grandma, Dom decided, observing her as Gabriel ushered her into the conference room. Tall and slim, she had finely modeled features, thick, upswept white hair, impeccable posture and the aloof expression of an absolute monarch.
He stepped around the large, glossy table to pull out her chair.
“Thank you, young man,” she said as she took her seat, her manner pure queen to commoner as he and Gabriel also sat.
“My pleasure,” he replied, secretly amused by her not-so-subtle effort to put him in his place.
Foregoing formal introductions, she got straight to the point. “According to your brother, you had something to do with that Grobane incident,” she said crisply. “The one that was in all the papers.”
“Something,” he agreed, settling back. He met her probing gaze with an unflinching one of his own. She could pry all she wanted, but he had no intention of discussing his last protection detail with her. And not just because it would be a breach of client confidentiality, even though that concern might be considered by some to be gone with the wind due to all the media attention the incident had received.
But because, unlike the press and the public, he didn’t consider taking a bullet for a client heroic. Nope, he’d screwed up, failed to follow his gut and was just damn lucky the bad guy had been a lousy shot. He still had nights when he would lie awake in a cold sweat thinking how close Carolina Grobane had come to being injured or killed.
He didn’t think he could’ve lived with that. And he sure as hell didn’t intend to rehash it—or court praise for something he considered to be far from his most shining hour, popular opinion be damned.
Evidently mistaking his silence for modesty, something approaching approval registered on Mrs. Sommers’ autocratic face. “Gabriel also mentioned you served our country as a Navy SEAL. And that you received numerous medals and commendations.”
This time, he sent his brother a reproachful look, which was met with a slight, live-with-it shrug. A little ruefully—apparently St. Gabe wasn’t above some minor payback—he returned his gaze to the client. “Yes, ma’am, that’s true.”
She pursed her lips. “He also assures me that if anyone can get my Delilah out of this mess she’s in, it’s you.”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly?” Her arctic-blue eyes drilled into him. “And what exactly do you mean by that, pray tell?”
“It means I have a general idea of your granddaughter’s situation, but I’d be doing us both a disservice if I made any promises until I know more,” he said easily.
There was a prolonged silence as once again she considered him, then she abruptly murmured, “Hmmph.” Leaning sideways, she reached into her large handbag and pulled out a fat document-sized manila envelope.
“I anticipated this,” she said brusquely. “It’s all here. Delilah’s original itinerary. A list of the people she met with. Transcripts of my conversations with that detestable Condesta’s representatives. Photos of and information about the compound in Santa Marita where she’s being held. Oh, and a photo of her, of course.”
“This should be very helpful.” Dom took the proffered envelope and set it down in front of him. “First, however, I think we’d better establish what, exactly, you want me to do. Take over negotiations? Handle the exchange?”
To his immense gratification, she snorted and said briskly, “Certainly not. I have lawyers to do those things. Lawyers and advisers and business managers, whom I allowed, against my better judgment, to convince me that dealing with Delilah’s captors was the right thing to do…” She trailed off, then squared her shoulders and ratcheted up her already ramrod posture. “I may be old, Mr. Steele, but I’m not stupid, at least not often, and I don’t care for extortion. I want you to go to San Timoteo and bring Delilah home where she belongs.”
He did his best to squelch an inner cheer. “Okay. But there are still things we need to discuss.”
Her mouth curved in a moue of annoyance. “If this is about your fee—”
“No, ma’am,” he assured her. “I’m sure you’re good for it.” He swallowed a grin at her huff of indignation, then got down to business. “What I want is some insight into your granddaughter. Is she a leader or a follower? Easygoing or high-strung? Quick off the mark or more of a deep thinker?”
“Why on earth do you need to know all that?” she snapped.
“Well, let’s see.” He lazily drummed his fingertips against the tabletop. “I guess because it would be helpful to know what to expect. Is she likely to scream or faint when I show up? Will she feel compelled to offer her opinion about every move I make, or will she do what she’s told? Is she going to get hysterical if we have to make a run for it and she breaks a nail?”
Abigail’s icy blue eyes glinted. “You may count on Delilah to behave sensibly, Mr. Steele. I didn’t raise her to indulge in histrionics. She’s a level-headed, responsible young woman as befits her station, and I can assure you she understands that sometimes duty—or circumstance—requires one to subvert one’s emotions and do what needs to be done.”
“Okay,” he said mildly. “But if she’s such a paragon of virtue, then how’d she wind up enjoying Condesta’s enforced hospitality?”
“I never claimed my granddaughter was perfect,” she said stiffly, raising her already elevated chin another fraction. “For all her many sterling qualities, once in a while, on exceedingly rare occasions, Delilah can be unexpectedly…stubborn.
“This trip was a perfect example. Although it could easily have been handled by one of the staff, whom we pay to do this sort of thing, and despite the fact that she has countless obligations that require her attention at home, she insisted on personally going to San Timoteo to inspect a school that had applied to the Anson Foundation, a nonprofit organization my late father started, for funding.
“As I understand it, once her business was completed she decided to attend some sort of local celebration. It got out of hand, the police were called in and when the young man she was with was threatened with arrest—” her lips tightened “—Delilah foolishly objected.”
Dominic nodded. The granddaughter might be a few years older and a little less flaky than he’d initially envisioned, but the rest of the story was still pretty much what he’d expected—a classic case of Rich Person Behaving Badly. “So how do you think she’s holding up?”
“I’m sure she’s managing. The Anson blood runs in her veins,” the old lady said coolly, as if that said it all.
And maybe it did, Dom decided. At least it didn’t sound as if the granddaughter was likely to wilt like a hothouse flower at her first sight of him. Or complain endlessly about his choices and methods, or because he hadn’t brought her champagne and caviar or her own private masseuse.
Not that he’d ever intended not to rescue her if given the opportunity. Even if Mrs. Sommers had revealed that her darling Delilah had all the charm of a polecat on steroids, he’d planned all along to go to San Timoteo to relieve El Presidente of his unwilling guest.
But he wasn’t a fool. For all his no-sweat approach to life, he believed in doing things right. And in the security business, that meant careful planning and meticulous preparation, which meant obtaining all the information you could.
Still, it was probably past time to end the suspense and let Queen Abigail know he was willing to save her bacon, so to speak. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Excellent!” Mrs. Sommers abruptly appeared years younger, for the first time revealing the genuine concern hidden beneath her crusty exterior. “How soon can you leave?”
“Sometime in the next forty-eight hours. Let me look this over—” he tapped the envelope “—make some calls and I’ll get back to you later today with any other questions that crop up and a more definitive timetable.”
“Excellent,” she repeated. Grasping her purse, she started to stand.
Already formulating a list of things he needed to do, he pushed to his feet. Once again, Dom and his new client shook hands and then Gabe offered his arm to escort her from the room. The two were almost to the door when Dom reached in and drew out the sheaf of papers. Paper-clipped to the top was a five-by-seven color photo. He glanced at it.
A shock like the blast from a stun gun jolted through him.
“This is your granddaughter? Lilah Cantrell?” Damned if his voice didn’t come out in a croak.
Mrs. Sommers turned, still graceful despite her years. “Delilah, yes. Her father was the product of my union with my second husband, James.”
He fought to keep his expression neutral. It took only a second for him to realize why he hadn’t made the connection: when he’d known Lilah, her grandmother’s name hadn’t been either Sommers or Cantrell, and the family mansion had been referred to as—he racked his brain, and suddenly he had it—the Trayburne estate.
But even so…He felt Gabriel’s sudden scrutiny like a touch. Yet Gabe being Gabe, his brother didn’t let on. “Come along, Abigail,” the other man said smoothly. “Margaret has the paperwork you need to sign at the front desk.”
The second they’d cleared the threshold, Dom turned his attention back to the glossy studio image clutched in his hand. A fine-boned blonde with china-blue eyes, a tantalizing mouth and an expression both reserved and challenging looked back at him.
Well, hell. Delilah Sommers was actually Lilah Cantrell. And despite her grandmother’s claims to the contrary, Lilah was every inch a self-centered society princess.
That he knew from personal experience.
Because Lilah Cantrell was the first—and only—woman he’d ever fallen hard for. The one woman he’d never been able to predict. The only woman ever to have shown him the door before he’d been sure he was ready to go.
And definitely the last woman on earth he’d deliberately seek out.
He uttered the first half of Gabe’s earlier curse.
“Something wrong?”
He jerked his head up, startled to find his older brother standing in the doorway watching him.
He immediately blanked his face. “No.”
And there wasn’t, he told himself firmly, shoving the picture back into the envelope. So what if he’d just agreed—no, insisted—on not just seeking Lilah out, but being allowed the privilege of saving her shapely little prima donna butt? He was a pro and he intended to act like it.
After all, the past was just that—the past. And he and Li had been barely more than kids at the time of their clichéd summer fling. What’s more, he’d known from the start they had no future. If in the intervening years he’d occasionally thought about her with a pang of regret, it was only because the sex had been incredible. Hell, more than incredible. Maybe the best of his life—
“You sure you’re all right?”
Gabe’s question yanked him back to reality. He thought about it for all of half a second and then felt a genuine smile form on his lips. “Yeah, I am. Why wouldn’t I be? I get to leave this Popsicle weather, go where I can work on my tan and foil some bad guys in the bargain. Plus we get paid for it.
“Trust me, bro. I can handle it.”
Three
“So you do this for a living?” Lilah’s eyebrows, shades darker than her pale hair, rose eloquently. “You—your brothers—are mercenaries?”
Apparently he hadn’t explained things as well as he’d thought. Just as this particular rescue mission wasn’t turning out to be the cakewalk he’d predicted.
That didn’t mean he had to stand here and let her get things wrong. “No,” Dom said flatly. “Mercenary implies no standards, no ethics, no values, no rules—and we stand for all those things. We don’t break U.S. law, we don’t work for anybody who isn’t one hundred per cent legit. Trust me. We can afford to be choosy.”
He refrained from adding that, in his opinion, he and his brothers had a lot in common with the guy whose nickname they shared, the one with the red cape and big S on his chest. Like him, they believed in justice and cared enough to risk their lives for it.
What’s more, unlike the majority of the populace, they’d all honorably served their country; every one of them was former military Special Operations and had put in their time on numerous tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and even darker corners of the world.
To her credit, Lilah appeared to get the message. She worried her bottom lip for an instant, then seemed to catch herself. Squaring her shoulders, she forced herself to meet his gaze head-on. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything…negative. Or—or to suggest I’m not glad you’re here. I am. It’s just…it’s unexpected.”
He couldn’t argue with that. “Don’t worry about it.”
God knew, he didn’t intend to. After all, it looked as if things were finally going his way. And that was good, since for a while, he had half-seriously started to think of this job as the Extraction from Hell.
First, his flight into San Timoteo had been diverted. Then, when he’d finally gotten wheels down, he’d found his local contact had vanished. Which was why it had taken him a frustrating thirty-odd hours to discover that: (A) Lilah wasn’t where she was supposed to be; (B) that once he had located her—here, at what the locals called Las Rocas, an isolated, heavily guarded compound sixty-five rugged, sparsely inhabited miles from Santa Marita, the nation’s capital and only large city—his best bet of getting her out was to get himself thrown in; and (C) the best way to do that involved volunteering to get his ass kicked.
Complicating matters further, his satellite phone had been confiscated by San Timotean customs and the last intel he’d received had warned that a big storm was due in at the end of the week. What’s more, thanks to this required detour to the island’s remote south coast, he and Lilah had missed their scheduled ride out of the country. So now, in addition to everything else, he was going to have to improvise that part of the rescue plan, too.
But then, he liked to improvise. And he was good at it. Good enough that, so far as he could see, there was now only one problem that might really give him grief.
And she was standing a few feet away.
Hell he’d forgotten just how pretty Lilah was. Damned if she still didn’t look just like the Disney version of Cinderella, all gilt hair and big blue eyes and the sort of skin you usually only saw in body lotion commercials.
Unfortunately—at least as far as he was concerned—unlike a proper G-rated fairy-tale heroine, she was also hot. She’d been hot at eighteen and, if his current itchy-fingered reaction to her was any indication, the subsequent years hadn’t done a thing to dim her fire.
Not that there was anything blatant about it. Or her. Far from it. She had a way about her, all elegant carriage and air of restraint that made a guy think of garden parties and symphony openings, not mud wrestling and strip joints.
And that was a big part of the problem. Call him perverse, but at age twenty it had been her look-but-don’t-touch demeanor that had first attracted him. He’d always loved a challenge—still did—and her sorority girl air of being unattainable had been like a red flag snapped in a bull’s face. All it had taken to hook him had been one look. After that, the only thing he’d been able to think about was sinking his fingers into her pale silky hair, cradling her close and kissing the primness right off that delectable mouth.
Of course, that’d been then and this was now. He was thirty years old. A man, not a boy. And she hadn’t just burned him all those years ago, she’d barbecued him. Which was not an experience he had any intention of repeating.
So how to explain the gut-wrenching, skin-tightening, gotta-have-some-of-that desire that had blasted through him the instant she’d laid her hands on him earlier?
“I just want to be sure I understand,” Lilah said, mercifully interrupting his thoughts.
Well, yeah. That makes two of us, sweetheart. I’d like to understand how I can be standing here thinking of all the different ways I’d like to have wild, swing-from-the-chandeliers sex with you when I haven’t seen you in ten years.
“Gran came to your office and hired you to rescue me?”
“That’s right.”
“And your brother has worked for her in the past. That’s why she went to him and how you came to be here?”
“More or less.”
“And after we…knew…each other you left Denver and joined the Navy?”
“Yeah. Now, if you don’t mind, we don’t have a lot of time before the sun goes down and the guards bring dinner, so let me ask the questions.” He’d think about his backstabbing libido later. Say back in Denver. Over a tall cool one at his favorite tavern. In the year 2025. For now, it was time to get down to business.
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Know what?”
“About dinner.”
He reminded himself to be patient, that it was understandable she’d have questions. “Because I spent yesterday surveilling this place. There’s a big tree about five hundred feet from the compound entrance. It’s tall enough that I could see them ferrying food from the kitchen. Now I need you to tell me whether they come back after dinner to pick up your plate or wait until morning.”
“So far, they’ve always left it until morning.”
“Good. Do you see anybody in between time? Do they do a bed check or come in when the guard changes shifts?”
“No. Why?”
“Because.” He felt for the opening in the seam of his pants just below his hip. “If that’s the case, then once the food comes we essentially become invisible until dawn. And I plan on us being gone from here way before then.”
Disbelief—and a gleam of longing?—flashed in her eyes. Yet she was too well-schooled to expose her emotions longer than that single moment. “Well, yes, that would be nice. But short of dematerializing and squeezing through the bars—” her voice was suddenly cool and uninflected “—I don’t see how you’re going to accomplish that. And even if you could, you’d still have to get the corridor door unbolted and then get past the guards you’re so intent on avoiding. Somehow I don’t see any of that happening.”
He pulled the thigh-length, razor-thin cutting blade free from its hiding place. “Neither do I. That’s why we’re not going out that way.”
“We’re not?” Lilah’s lips parted in astonishment.
And just like that, that prickly wanna-touch sensation washed over him. Because she really did have the most luscious mouth….
“No, we’re not,” he said firmly, forcing himself to concentrate on their surroundings, to triple-check that he hadn’t overlooked anything, even though the layout was already firmly inscribed on his brain. Located on a windswept headland on San Timoteo’s southern tip, the cell block occupied the far end of the walled-off compound that was also home to a commandant’s residence and modest barracks.
The jail itself was the shape of a basic rectangle. At the top of the shorter, western wall was a solid iron door that opened from a guard house into a narrow corridor boasting a single small, skinny window. The corridor, roughly five feet by forty, fronted four small, barred cells that were identical in size and shared a common solid back wall. Their only other notable feature was their utter lack of creature comforts.
Deciding the surroundings were stark enough to depress even his overly active libido, Dom returned his gaze to Lilah.
Who’d taken yet another step back from the bars and was now standing in the sole shaft of sunlight, allowing him to see what he’d missed before due to the deep shadows that draped the room like a heavy blanket.
A smudge of bruises circled her right wrist, a larger contusion ran from shoulder to elbow on her opposite arm, and a fading but still telltale smear of yellow-tinged purple marred one side of her jaw.
The sight made him go cold. Suddenly wishing he could turn back time and have a real go at the sons-of-bitches guards instead of pulling his punches the way he had when he’d let them overpower him, he struggled to contain his anger and keep it out of his voice. “Lilah.”
His voice may have sounded normal, but clearly something—the rigidness of his stance, the muscle that had twitched to life in his jaw—must have tipped her off to his sudden tension because she went very still. “What?
“Did they hurt you?” he asked softly.
“Hurt me?” Despite her cautious response, the fingers of her right hand reflexively touched her battered wrist, revealing she knew what had prompted the question.
“Were you raped?”
Abruptly, her expression cleared. “No.” She shook her head. “No. I’m not positive, but I think El Presidente issued orders that I was off-limits…that way.”
“Oh, yeah? Why would he do that?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe because he only wants my money.”
“So the bruises are from what?” he persisted.
“This—” she indicated the area above her hand and gave a little shrug “—one of the guards got a little rough. The rest—” inexplicably, a faint flush colored the curve of her elegant cheekbones “—are from when I was being held in Santa Marita. There was a car accident. Well, I suppose accident might not be exactly the correct term—”
“But nobody forced themselves on you?” he interrupted, wanting—needing—to be sure.
“No.”
“Okay, then. That’s…good.” As if his vision had suddenly improved—maybe he’d taken a harder hit to the head than he’d thought—he now saw that in addition to having been roughed up, she was on the brink of being not slender but fragile, the kind of look people got when they’d gone too long without adequate food.
The discovery didn’t improve his temper. He wanted her out of here now. Even more than he wanted a piece of the guards, and he wanted that pretty damn bad.
The fierceness of his feelings caught him off guard, but he’d think about it later. Over that beer he planned to drink back home. Without a certain blue-eyed, satin-skinned blonde to distract him and make him crave things he didn’t need.
“If we’re not leaving through the door, how do you plan to get us out of here?” Lilah asked.
She was nothing if not persistent. “If I tell you, will you stop with the Twenty Questions?”
“Yes, of course. I—”
“Deal,” he said flatly, cutting her off. “To answer your question—we’re going out through the hole I’m going to cut through the wall.”
Lilah watched in shock as Dominic turned his back on her. Stepping close to the expanse of rough gray concrete that formed the back of the cell block, he began to run his hands over it like a blind man exploring a lover’s face.
A score of questions screamed for answers in her head, competing for space with a dozen exclamations. The two common themes seemed to be “how on earth?” and “you’re out of your mind.”
Yet his silence, combined with his averted back, made it perfectly clear he didn’t want to talk.
Well, neither did she, Lilah thought, retreating to her bed. She could use some time to think. And to sift through all the contradictory emotions that were bouncing around inside her like rubber balls in a cement mixer.
She was barely settled, however, and nowhere close to sorting through the jumble of doubt, hope, fear and frustration vying for her attention, when the sound of the bolt being drawn in the outer door splintered the silence.
Her gaze snapped to Dominic. In the fraction of time it took for the door to swing open, her jailmate whirled and slid down the wall to sit in a crumpled heap on the floor, his arms dangling limply, his eyes shut, his head flopped to one side.
If she hadn’t known better, she’d have believed he was an injured man just barely holding on to consciousness. Heaven knew, the guard certainly bought it. Flicking the big American a dismissive look, he said something clearly contemptuous in San Timoteo’s version of Spanish as he headed for Lilah’s cell.
To her surprise, Dom answered back, his voice slurred convincingly.
The guard laughed. The sound was ugly, as was the lecherous look he sent Lilah’s way as he stooped down and slid the small tin plate clutched in his meaty hand through the gap at the base of the bars. He stood and spoke again, blew her a noisy kiss, then strolled back out the door.
The second the sound of the bolt sliding into place faded, Dominic straightened. “Bastard,” he bit out, his voice low but lethal.
Curiosity overcame Lilah’s earlier pique. “What did he say?”
“Nothing you need to hear.”
She pursed her lips. It was hardly the response she’d been seeking, but at least he was talking to her again. “I never knew you spoke Spanish.”
“I learned as a SEAL.” He hitched his muscular shoulders a fraction of an inch in one of his trademark shrugs. “Turns out languages are easy for me.”
“Oh.”
His gaze flicked to the plate. “You should eat.”
She considered the meager portion of beans and flat bread. The food was an unappetizing shade of gray, and she knew from experience it looked far better than it tasted. Even so, the sight of it made her stomach squeeze and her mouth water.
Yet how could she eat when he didn’t? “We’ll share it.”
His reply was immediate and forceful. “No. We won’t. You need it a hell of a lot more than I do.”
He clearly didn’t intend to budge. Since arguing would no doubt be fruitless, Lilah dutifully stood and retrieved the plate. She picked up the crude wooden spoon, unhurriedly ate exactly half of what was there, then walked over and slid the plate under the narrow gap between the floor and the bars.
Without a word, she went back to her bed. When she turned, he was giving her a hard look. She gazed unflinchingly back.
With a curse that made her wince, he reached for the plate, jerked it close, and ate.
“Do you really think you can hack through solid concrete with that flimsy bar?” she asked a moment later as he mopped up the last morsel of beans with the last scrap of bread. “And what about the guards? Won’t somebody outside notice what’s going on?”
“The wall’s aren’t made out of concrete. They’re made out of concrete block,” he corrected, climbing to his feet. “Cemented together with a local mortar, which is made out of straw and mud, and which is what I intend to go after. My flimsy little bar, in contrast, is made of a space-age titanium alloy ten times stronger than tempered steel. And nobody’s going to see what’s happening because the back wall’s built right on the edge of a drop. So yeah. I think my plan will work.”
He walked over and chucked the empty plate at the outer door with a fierceness that startled her. Yet when he turned, he appeared calm and in control, and when he spoke it was with an easy confidence she wanted desperately to believe in. “Give me a little credit, okay? I didn’t just get myself tossed in here hoping an idea would come to me. I know what I’m doing.”
“Yes, of course,” she said faintly. He might look like the boy she’d known, but clearly he was all grown-up. What’s more, he was right. He was her best, her only, hope of escape and questioning him at every turn wasn’t doing either of them any good.
“And now, since our hosts really don’t seem inclined to check up on us despite my bad manners—” he slid his blade free of its hiding place and once more headed for the back of his cell “—I might as well start. Why don’t you try to get some rest? You’re going to need it for later.”
She was being dismissed. Again. Yet this time she didn’t take offense, simply did as he suggested and laid down. Partly because there was nothing to be gained by arguing, but mostly because between the heat, the lack of nutrition and the internal uproar his presence caused her, she was worn out.
She curled on her side, tucked a hand beneath her cheek and lowered her lashes, pretending not to watch as he started his assault on the wall, using his handy-dandy blade thingy to hack away at the mortar.
God help her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him. And it wasn’t only because of the mesmerizing way his back and shoulder muscles bunched and shifted with his every move.
No, it was also because of her realization that she’d been fooling herself for years, believing the picture she carried of him in her mind was accurate.
It hadn’t been. She knew that now; the proof was right in front of her. At some point in the passage of time, she’d clearly forgotten just how vividly alive he was. Just as she’d forgotten that when she was in his presence, the whole world seemed sharper, brighter and infinitely more interesting.
It had been that way from the very first time she’d laid eyes on him, she thought, remembering….
Once again, it was a hot, lazy June day. She lay languidly on a chaise longue by the swimming pool at Cedar Hill, the palatial Denver estate owned by her grandmother’s newest husband.
Off in the distance, she heard the distinctive whine of an approaching lawn mower and ridiculously, her pulse skittered. Grateful for the camouflage of her sunglasses, she casually shifted her head to the left toward the emerald swath of the five-acre back lawn. She was rewarded for her effort by the sight of a tall, bronzed young man cutting the grass.
She’d first noticed him the previous week; he wasn’t the regular lawn man, and a casual inquiry of Mr. Tomkins, who looked after the pool, had provided her with the information that he was a vacation fill-in.
Whatever the reason for his presence, with his broad shoulders and confident swagger, he was hard to miss. She knew he’d noticed her, too. Unlike the well-mannered boys she was accustomed to, he’d stared boldly at her, his gaze lingering in a way she’d told herself was totally annoying.
Which hardly explained why she’d been lying here for the past hour, hoping to get another glimpse of him. Or why just looking at him now made her throat feel tight. Nor did she understand the panic that bloomed inside her when, as if he’d sensed her regard, he abruptly brought the lawn mower to a halt, shut off the engine and began to walk toward her, his long legs rapidly eating up the distance between them.
Before she could act on a sudden impulse to flee, he was standing at the wrought iron fence that encircled the pool. “Hey.”
For a moment she couldn’t move. Then, driven by pride and an abruptly awakened sense of self-preservation that warned he was a threat—although to what she couldn’t clearly pinpoint—she slowly sat up. “May I help you?” She used her best drawing room voice in a desperate bid to hide the way her heart was pounding.
“Yeah.” He flashed her a smile that made her stomach flip. “Would you mind getting me a glass of water?”
A bead of sweat tracked down the column of his neck, adding to the damp that made his black T-shirt cling to his muscled chest, and an unfamiliar heat twisted through her. Embarrassed, she reached up and slid her sunglasses off, using the action as an excuse to look away. “Pardon me?”
“I’m thirsty. You don’t seem to be doing anything, so if you wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate you getting me a drink.”
Her gaze snapped back to him as she tried to decide which was more unsettling: his nerve or her realization that an unfamiliar part of her wanted to do his bidding. “I don’t think so.” She picked up her book and sat back, waiting for him to take offense and stalk away.
He didn’t. Instead, he cocked a hip and leaned closer, muscles flexing as he rested his tanned dusty arms against the top of the fence. “Aw, come on. You’re not too good to mix with the hired help, are you?”
Stung that he’d think such a thing, she ratcheted her chin up a notch. “Of course not.”
He raised one straight, inky eyebrow. “So what’s the problem?”
Their gazes locked. To her fascination, his eyes, which she’d expected to be dark due to his near-black hair and olive complexion were a clear compelling green. And his mouth looked hard and soft all at the same time, the lips full and….
She scrambled to her feet, appalled by the direction of her thoughts. Tossing her long braid over her shoulder, she marched over to the wet bar and filled a tall glass with icy water from the tap, staunchly ignoring the fact that her hands were shaking. Head high, she stalked back to the fence and thrust the tumbler at him. “Here.”
He took her offering with lazy grace, purposefully brushing his rough, calloused fingers against hers in the exchange. Raising the glass, he tipped back his head and drank, his strong, smooth-skinned throat rippling. She waited, unable to look away, as he licked the last bead of moisture from his lips once he’d drained the glass. “Thanks.” He handed her back the glass.
Her own throat felt dust dry. “You’re welcome. Now please go away.”
He acted as if he hadn’t heard her. “My name’s Dominic. Dominic Steele. What’s yours?”
“I see no reason for you to know that,” she said coolly.
“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. After all—” his gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth, lingered, then unhurriedly came back up “—how can I ask you out if I don’t know your name?”
If she had any sense, she’d walk away. Yet she stood rooted to the spot. Silence stretched between them. Then she heard herself say in a breathy way that was totally unlike her, “It’s Lilah…Cantrell.”
“Lilah,” he repeated. “That’s perfect. A pretty name for a pretty girl.” The faintest of smiles crinkled the corners of his vivid eyes and her knees instantly went weak. “Come on, Lilah, go out with me. Please?”
She knew she should say no. She could just imagine her grandmother’s reaction to her dating someone from the lawn service. Then again, Gran was gone for the rest of the summer on her honeymoon cruise. And except for the staff, Lilah was alone, as usual, the weeks until her sophomore years at Stanford started stretching interminably before her.
Still, except on rare occasions, such as last winter’s charity cotillion and her senior high school prom, she didn’t really care to date. She’d always found the opposite sex to be either crass or boring, or both.
Dominic Steele was neither. In the past five minutes, he’d managed to turn her ordered world upside down—surprising, annoying, intriguing and charming her all at the same time. Which was no doubt why what was left of her common sense was shrilly insisting that nothing good could come from the pull she felt merely standing close to him.
The prudent thing to do was say no.
Oh, come on, whispered an unfamiliar little voice in her head. Aren’t you just a little tired of always doing the right thing? Of forever being the straight-A student, the dutiful granddaughter? After all, you’re not a child any longer. And no matter what Gran says, you’re nothing like your mother—
“You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
Her spine stiffened automatically. “Please,” she said with a faint sniff.
“So prove it.” He looked at her expectantly.
“Oh, very well.” She did her best to sound blasé, but it was hard to do with her heart thundering like a drum solo. “I suppose I could rearrange my schedule.”
Satisfaction flashed across his face. “Great. I’ll pick you up at eight.” He turned to walk away, then twisted back around. “Oh, and Lilah?”
“What?”
“Wear pants.”
“Why?”
His expression turned enigmatic. “You’ll find out tonight.” As assured as a prince, he strode away, leaving her to stare after him, already questioning the wisdom of what she’d done.
She got her first inkling of what she was in for when he’d roared up the drive that night on a gleaming black motorcycle.
Grateful again that Gran was away, Lilah had reluctantly allowed Dominic to coax her onto the back of the bike. Once there, she’d found she had no choice but to wrap her arms around his lean hard middle, press her cheek against the warm hollow between his shoulder blades and trust him to keep her safe.
Looking back later, she’d been able to see that their ride that night had been the perfect metaphor for the relationship that followed. It had been wild, scary, exciting and exhilarating, with Dominic taking her places she’d never been before.
Within hours, she’d begun to fall in love with him. Within days they’d become lovers. And after that….
“Li? You awake?”
With a start, she opened her eyes. She blinked, surprised to find that while she’d been strolling down memory lane, night had fallen. The cell block was cloaked in darkness except for a single weak arrow of light streaming in the small barred window. It was just enough illumination to reveal Dominic standing over her. Startled, disoriented, suddenly not sure she wasn’t dreaming, she gazed up at him. “But…how did you get in here?”
“Lock pick. In my boot.” He held out his hand. “Come on. It’s time to get the hell out of Dodge.” Hard and calloused, his fingers closed around hers.
She drew in a sharp breath at the contact. Climbing unsteadily to her feet, she struggled to come to grips with the shift from weeks of waiting to sudden action. By the time her head had cleared, he’d led her out of her cell and into his.
She continued to follow him, her gaze locked on the solid outline of his back, when, without warning, he stepped to one side.
She rocked to a halt, a stiff salt breeze slapping her in the face, and stared at the man-sized opening that now gaped in the previously solid, seemingly impregnable wall. Beyond it stretched nothing but a vast black sky littered with glittering silver stars.
“Dear God.” With a start, she remembered he’d said something about a drop, but she’d never, ever, imagined this.
She took a cautious step forward, craned her neck and looked down. There, so far below it looked to be miles away, the ocean rolled in with an impressive crash as it met the perpendicular cliff face. “You can’t be serious. This is your escape route?”
“That’s right.” Unlike the water, Dominic was suddenly far too close. His breath washed over her temple and every sensitive inch of skin on her body had goose bumps.
She tried to ignore her rapidly disintegrating nerves. “It’s got to be at least a hundred-foot drop.”
“More like fifty.”
“But how are we going to get down?”
“Easy.” All of a sudden, the lazy humor was back in his voice. “We’re going to jump.”
For a second, Lilah was sure she hadn’t heard correctly; then she was afraid she had. “You’re kidding, right?
“Nope.”
“But that’s crazy! If the fall doesn’t kill us, getting dashed by the tide against the cliff will do the job. That is, if we haven’t already hit a submerged rock!”
“No rocks,” he said calmly. “The tide’s on its way out. And the waves sound a lot worse than they really are. It’s a clean shot down, with more than enough depth to be safe. I checked.”
He’d checked. The knowledge brought reassurance, which was crazy in itself. If ever there was a man not to trust, he was the one.
Yet it wasn’t as if she really had a choice, she realized. Not anymore. She didn’t want to think what would happen if they were still here when the guards showed up in the morning and saw Dominic’s handiwork.
“Look,” he said quietly, his face in shadow, which only served to make his voice even more compelling, “I know you’ve always had a thing about heights—”
“No. It’s all right. If you—if this—” she stopped, swallowed, reached down deep to steady herself “—if this is what we have to do, this is what we have to do.”
He moved out of the darkness and into the moonlight, an odd expression on his face that she couldn’t identify. “You mean I’m not going to have to tie you up and gag you to get you to jump?”
She shivered at the picture his words conjured. “No,” she said quickly.
“Too bad.” That crooked, cocky grin that had always made her stomach flip-flop flashed across his handsome face. “Then let’s do it.”
“Now?” She took an involuntary step back.
“Yeah. Now.” Before she could retreat farther, he reached out and wrapped his arms around her.
For a moment, the shock of his embrace was so overwhelming she forgot to be afraid.
And then she forgot to be anything else as he lifted her off her feet, took two powerful steps through the crude doorway he’d created and vaulted them out into the wind-whipped void.
Four
The night breeze danced through the palm trees that fringed the small cove, while the moon played hide-and-seek with a flotilla of clouds. Still, the silvery orb provided sufficient light to guide Dominic and Lilah as they waded through the surf toward the shallows and the tiny sliver of beach beyond.
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Caroline Cross
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: She had trusted him wtih her heart and been devestated. Now she had to trust him with her life. Lilah Cantrell: She couldn′t imagine anything worse than being held in a Third World prison. Until she set eyes on Dominic Steele–the very first man who′d stirred her desires and broken her heart.Dominic Steele: The ex-U.S. Navy Seal turned bodyguard-for-hire tried to keep his rescue mission strictly professional, but Lilah–and the memories of their shared history–awakened his long-dormant protective instincts…and passion. Could their newfound trust, born of desperation, sustain them once they reached safety? Or was that when the real danger would begin?