Falling for the Enemy (8 page)

All kinds of interesting ideas formed in her mind, but then a fit of paranoia gripped her. Would neighbors see him coming up to her house and draw conclusions? Ms. Van Hendler lived a few doors down, and despite the impression the octogenarian liked to give people, she didn’t miss much. Then again, the hard rain made it unlikely anyone would be taking an evening walk. And it wasn’t like he’d be there all night. Right?

She reached around and grabbed the large umbrella from her backseat, and then squeezed out her driver’s side door. A few side-steps took her around her car, and then she watched in dry-mouthed wonder as Shaun walked up her driveway, wet hair shoved back from his face, rain-drenched gray U.S. Navy T-shirt clinging to every hard line of his shoulders and chest. His eyes locked on her like a predator mesmerizing its prey.

A shiver ran down her spine, and she blamed the involuntary reaction on the drop in temperature brought on by the storm. He stopped just inside the garage, blinked the raindrops off his eyelashes, and focused on her. “Lead the way.”

“Yes, um…okay.” She kicked her butt into gear and walked to the side door of her garage. She felt more than heard him behind her, and touched the button on the wall that lowered the automatic door. They stepped out of the garage, and she did her best to cover them both with her umbrella as they navigated the steep, carved-stone steps leading to her front door. Silly, considering he was already soaked to the skin, and their height difference made it far more likely she’d poke out his eye than shield him from the rain, but some deep-seated part of her felt compelled to offer him shelter, even if he didn’t seem to want it.

When they reached her covered porch, she propped the umbrella against the rail and searched through her purse for her keys. From the corner of her eye she saw him put his toolbox down and set the bag beside it.

“I can put the camera up here.” He pointed to the light hanging from the porch ceiling above them. “That will get film of anyone who comes near your door.”

“Sounds like a plan.” She unlocked her door and pushed it open, flipped on the outside light then looked back at him, surprised to see him heading down the steps.

“Where are you going?”

“To my car, to get the ladder.”

“No need. I have a step-stool. Come on in. I’ll grab it.”

He climbed the three steps back onto her porch and ran his hand through his hair, pushing wet strands off his forehead. Then he inspected the mud caked in the tread of his thick soled work boots. “I’ll wait out here.”

She rolled her eyes, but didn’t bother wasting her breath to argue her interior could stand up to a little mud. Instead she slipped out of her pink ballet flats and left them on her welcome mat to dry. Her bare feet slapped against the old pine floors as she hurried down the hall to the linen closet and grabbed a towel. She swung through her kitchen on the way back to get the fold-up stool she kept tucked in the gap between the fridge and the wall.

By the time she returned to the porch, he had a flashlight and his tools set out in a neat line on the rail and the camera unpackaged. Efficient. He reached out to take the step-stool from her, but she handed him the towel instead. “Here. Dry off first.”

He stared at the towel like it was a foreign object for a moment, during which time she realized she’d just offered him the Ariel beach towel her crazy aunt Jackie had sent her after taking a trip to Orlando, because…well…redhead. When she looked up at him, she caught the telltale twitch of his lip.

“It was a
gift
. My aunt thinks I look like The Little Mermaid.”

His eyes shifted from her to the cartoon on the towel, and then back at her. “Your aunt has a point. Thanks, Ariel.”

She meant to set up the step-stool while he dried off, but the sight of him roughing the towel over his hair, his face, and then dragging it down his chest and abs derailed her intentions. She imagined standing with him under the soft glow of the porch light, helping him pull the wet shirt over his head, and then running the towel all over his bare, damp skin. Her attention drifted to his rain-splattered jeans. In her mind’s eye she knelt before him and slowly undid the buttons at his fly, pushed his jeans down his long, powerful legs, and then…

A towel appeared in her line of vision, blocking out her fantasy. She blinked, took the towel, and raised her eyes to his.

“Thank you, sweet Virginia,” he said, but his not-so-innocent smile suggested he wasn’t thanking her for the towel so much as the impure thoughts. Heat seeped into her face and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

“No problem,” she muttered, and strode into the house, but after a few restless minutes puttering around in the kitchen, she gave up trying to distract herself and wandered back out to the porch. This time she made herself useful, running to the breaker box in the little utility room just inside her back door, and turning off the power to the porch light at his signal. Then she was back, sharing the step-stool with him, trying to ignore the heat coming off his body as she held the flashlight so he could see what he was doing.

He smelled like soap, and rain, and testosterone. His jaw flexed as he screwed the base of the camera to the wooden slats of her porch ceiling. A stray drop of water ran down his neck and disappeared under the collar of his shirt. Her tongue itched to follow the wet trail.

“Okay,” he said softly, and for a moment she thought he was giving her permission to run her tongue over his skin, but then he lowered his arms and added, “want to go flip the switch?”

Oh yeah. That. “Absolutely. Sure.” She handed him the flashlight and practically jumped off the stool. “Be right back.”

She hustled to the breaker box and threw the switch, then inched down the hall far enough to confirm the light flickered on. From the porch she heard him utter something that sounded like, “Lightning knows his shit,” which she took to mean the camera worked. She stopped in the kitchen to pour a glass of water, briefly considered throwing it over her head to cool herself down, but settled for a deep drink before she returned to the porch.

He stood there bathed in porch light, with his head tipped down and his eyes closed, absently rubbing the back of his neck. God, he looked…weary. Just like the night she’d dragged him into her salon and watched his eyelids grow heavy as she chatted his ear off and trimmed his hair. A bunch of stupid and highly misplaced protective instincts rose up and took control of her mouth.

She ran a hand down his back, feeling his body heat through the drenched T-shirt. “Have you had dinner?”

He straightened and looked at her. “I planned to pick up something from Boone’s on the way home.”

“Change your plan. I’ll make dinner.”

Now he started gathering up his tools. “I don’t want to track up your house. I’m all dirty and wet.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say, “Me, too,” but she swallowed the wayward retort. “Not a problem. Leave your shoes by the door and you won’t track up my house. You can shower while I get dinner ready, and I’ll toss your clothes in the dryer.”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“Tell you what, I’ll save the coq au vin for another night, but I have this funny habit of eating every evening, and I can just as easily boil up a whole box of pasta as half.”

The sarcasm earned her a smile. He closed the lid on his toolbox. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“I put it exactly like that.” She waited while he unlaced his boots, slipped them off and left them neatly paired up by her door. Her shoes looked ridiculously small and delicate—and strangely intimate—resting beside his.

But it wasn’t until he stepped into her entryway that she fully appreciated the meaning of the word intimate. He took up all room in the narrow space. The soft, sage green paint she’d painstakingly layered onto thick plaster walls seemed to nudge them together and the original etched glass fixture gracing the entryway dappled them in soft light. The steady pitter-patter of rain on the roof insulated her ears from mundane noises like the tick of her grandma’s mantle clock in the living room, or the hum of the refrigerator kicking on in the kitchen.

Dirty, wet, and tired
, she reminded herself, and led him down the hall to the one and only bathroom, stopping at the built-in linen closet to dig out another towel. She chose a blue striped one this time.

“No mermaid?”

“I’m sorry. Did you
want
a mermaid towel?”

He shrugged. “Might be the closest I get to showering with a redhead tonight.”

Chapter Nine

Shaun braced his hands on the blue-tiled shower wall, tipped his head down and let the hot water beat down on his scalp. He attempted a turn in the tiny compartment and smacked his elbow into the frosted glass door. The flimsy latch gave, the door flew open and water doused the white bathmat. He pulled the door shut so he could finish rinsing off without flooding the small room. Damn it, pre-war bathrooms weren’t built for guys his size. This was like showering in a doll house.

The space seemed even smaller thanks to all the girl stuff closing in on him from every available surface. His showers up until now had been blissfully devoid of salts, muds, butters, brushes, and other junk populating Ginny’s bathroom. He slid the soap from the stingy, yet overflowing, built-in shelf and was about to scrub it across his chest when something made him stop and sniff the plain, white bar. The sweet, sunny scent of Virginia snuck into his nostrils, infiltrated his nervous system, and tugged hard on his dick. As much as he appreciated the effect, the idea of walking around smelling like a honey-dipped lemon blossom gave him pause. But he figured
she’d
appreciate it more than him walking around smelling like sweat and rain. He lathered up and imagined her in there with him, her wet hair streaming like liquid fire over her pale skin. He practically felt her soap-slicked hands sliding along his neck, down his back, and then sneaking around front to cup his balls. His eyelids drooped while his cock sprang to life. Finally, those slim fingers would curl around his—

The soap slipped out of his hand and landed with a thud on the tile floor. When he bent over to get it, his ass hit the shower door. The latch gave out again and this time the door flew open so hard it slammed into the bathroom wall. Water from the shower sprayed everywhere.

“Shit!”

He grabbed the door and pulled it closed. It clattered into the latch at the same time Ginny knocked on the door and called, “Is everything all right in there?”

“Fine,” he called over the cascade of the shower.
Just standing here with a hard-on that won’t back off, systematically demolishing your bathroom
.

“Okay. Take your time. Your jeans are dry. I’m just going to pop in and leave them for you.”

He stared through the frosted glass as her blurry outline moved into his line of sight. She put his folded jeans on the counter, puttered around with something or other by the sink, and then turned. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he got the impression she was staring at the shower.

“Do you…have everything you need?” The hesitant, husky voice encompassed him as completely as the warm steam from the shower. Her palm formed a dark shadow on the glass door.

No. I need you to strip down, get in here, and…
Some scrap of pride wouldn’t let him say the words though. Virginia wasn’t a hesitant girl, but she had plenty of hesitations about him. Being her impulsive mistake, yet again, didn’t sit well with him. “I’m good. Thanks.” If she wanted more, she was going to have to say so, without hesitation or the escape hatch of “one last time.”

“Great. Good.” The shadow of her hand disappeared. “I’ll go start dinner.”

The
thunk
of the bathroom door told him she’d left. He turned off the water, listened to her footsteps continue down the hall, and tried not to be disappointed. He shouldn’t be, he told himself as he dried off and pulled on his briefs and jeans. She had her goals, and spending time with him put one of the main ones at risk. Meanwhile, his life needed a few fundamentals—little stuff like some goddamned direction and a new career—before he started layering in distractions. And even if he was settled enough to consider a relationship, his father’s adversary would be an inadvisable choice—for all of them.

Valid points, but they didn’t do much for the disappointment. He made his way down the hall toward the kitchen, barefoot and shirtless, serenaded by the sound of Ginny half-singing, half-humming. He stepped into the kitchen and saw her.

Part of her, anyway. She was bent over, with her head in the oven, presenting him with a stunning view of her backside covered by those innocent white shorts.

“Ginny.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, smiling. “I think that’s the first time you’ve called me—” But as she took in the sight of him standing there her words trailed off and the smile disappeared.

“I hope this isn’t one of those no shoes, no shirt, no services places.”

The smile snuck back to her lips. She straightened and closed the oven. “No. We’re pretty casual here at Casa Boca. Can I get you a beer or something?”

Alcohol had turned into a hazard as soon as his sleep problems had started, but it was one he’d been smart enough to recognize and avoid. “I’m fine. I’m no Anthony Bourdain, but I can stir a pot or—”

She waved his offer off. “Everything’s under control. I put the game on in the sitting room. Go on in, relax, and take a load off. I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

He wasn’t sure if she was trying to indulge him or get him out of her hair, but either way, the idea of kicking back for a few minutes suddenly sounded pretty damn good. A few steps down the hall brought him to her sitting room. The lighting was low, and mainly from the television. Springs in the dark blue sofa squeaked as he sat. He moved a fancy, fringed decorative pillow off to the side, and fingered the fluffy, matching throw draped over the back of the sofa. Girl stuff—as fascinating as it was confounding.

He slung an arm along the sofa back and stared at the screen. Seventh inning shut-out. The remote sat on the dark, mission-style coffee table in front of him. He picked it up, intending to channel surf, but ended up just turning the volume down and leaving the game on.

Virginia’s soft, smoky rendition of “Umbrella” drifted to him from across the hall. The images on the screen started to blur. He blinked them back into focus, once…twice…and then gave in to the compulsion to rest his eyes for five lousy minutes.

…

“Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

Shaun jerked upright and looked around as if totally disoriented.

“Hey.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Ginny’s house, camera install, thank you dinner, remember?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes, and she suspected he wouldn’t appreciate knowing how much he looked like a tired little boy, but the gesture transported her back in time, to an early memory. She couldn’t have been more than four or five, sitting between her parents in a pew at Bluelick Baptist, watching young Shaun Buchanan several pews over, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“You snuck in a nap.” Hoping to tease the haunted expression from his face, she took a seat beside him on the sofa and added, “That’s twice you’ve fallen asleep on me. I think I’m boring you.”

“No.” He shook his head. “It’s not you. It’s me. I…haven’t been sleeping well.” The words came out reluctantly, like the last drops of water from a dry well.

“You poor man. How long has this been going on?” She didn’t know about anyone else, but her life went to hell in a hand-basket pretty damn quick if she dragged around more than a few days without a good night’s sleep.

He stared at her for a long moment. “On and off for seven months.”

“Seven months?”
Men
. “That’s a ridiculous amount of time to suffer. Have you talked to a doctor?”

He opened his mouth to say something, but then expelled a breath and ran a restless hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in the kind of haphazard disarray some guys spent lots of time and product trying to achieve. “I’ve talked the whole mess to death—with my commanding officer, my doctor—”

“Well, fine. Now talk to
me
.” She scooted closer when he edged away. He was feeling penned in? Too bad. People talked to her. That was her gift. “Talk to me,” she repeated, never taking her eyes off his face.

His hand attacked his hair again, and then he dropped his arm, tilted his head back and closed his eyes. Surrender.

“My sleep problems started shortly after my last mission with the SEALs.”

Her heart sank under a creeping wave of dread. Whatever came next was going to be bad. Not Justin-painted-a-foul-word-on-my-wall bad, or anything else that passed for bad in Bluelick, but the kind of fucked-up that messed with the head of one of the strongest of the strong. She took a fortifying breath, and pressed on. “Coincidence?”

His laugh contained absolutely no humor. “Not so much. My last mission went sideways, to put it mildly.”

“Tell me.”

He laughed again, and shook his head. “Trust me Virginia, you do not want to hear the details.”

“Why? They’re just words, Shaun. They can’t hurt me…unless…” She lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. “If you tell me, are you going to have to kill me?”

This time his laugh came closer to real amusement, and his eyes found hers. “If I said yes, would you drop the subject?”

“No. I’d take my chances. Where was your last mission?”

His eyes drifted away. “The Sudan. Counterterrorism mission involving a high-value target within Al-Qaeda. Go in. Extract him from the compound where he was living in plain sight under a false identity. Bring him to justice.”

Jesus. She styled hair for a living. It suddenly seemed so ridiculous. “Sounds cut-and-dried,” she deadpanned.

“It should have been. We got our intel from a reliable local informant. Satellite pictures confirmed everything he told us. Our target lived like a king in a fancy enclave on the outskirts of Khartoum, in a spacious home with a panoramic view of the Nile. Approximately seventy-five members of his family, staff, and aides lived there, too.”

“Sounds like a lot of…variables.”

“The SEALs are trained for variables. Part of the deal is to get the job done with precision. A good team can nab a feral rat from a Tokyo subway at rush hour without a single witness—if nothing goes wrong.”

“But, in your case, something went wrong.” Her stomach clenched at the thought, but she told herself to toughen up. This had been his reality. All she had to do was listen.

“The thing about informants in a place like the Sudan is they’re poor. Poor at a level people in the U.S. can’t fathom. They have poor parents, siblings, spouses and children, and they’re all trying to survive any way they can. A family member learned what was going on and took the information to our target.”

“Oh, no.” The clench in her stomach evolved to a cramp.

“The night of the mission, we came in slightly off our timetable. High winds delayed our chopper about ten minutes. We’d barely breached the outer walls when the whole compound blew sky high. Our target was a firm believer in the scorched earth policy.”

“God. Shaun.” She couldn’t stop herself from reaching for him, or stop the immediate sense of relief when his hand closed over hers and his warmth seeped into her skin. “Were you hurt?”

“Not a scratch. Not on me, or anybody else on the team. But there were casualties. Lots of them. Inside…” He trailed off and rubbed a hand over his forehead, as if to erase images lingering in his mind.

“I don’t understand. If the guy blew up his own home, who would have been inside?”

“All of his wives, all of the daughters, and most of the domestic staff. The final body count came to forty-three.”

“Good lord.” A sick taste polluted the back of her throat. She rested her free hand on his shoulder and held on. “Why?”

He raised and lowered his shoulders in a matter-of-fact gesture. “You can disappear with a handful of sons and a few aides, but you can’t empty an entire household without somebody noticing all the activity. So he cut his losses, left the rest of them there as unsuspecting bait, and hoped to take out a SEAL team at the same time. Even feral rats know a few tricks.”

Her next question came from a hard, vengeful place inside her she never knew existed, and she couldn’t ask it in a voice above a whisper. “Did you get the rat?”

He squeezed her hand. “Affirmative. We waded into that blown-out, burning shell of a building, over bodies of women and children in unimaginable condition, until we found a woman—one woman—crying her kids’ names. She was in terrible shape…she was just…” He stopped, drew in a breath, and let it out slowly. “She wasn’t going to make it. But she was alive, and conscious enough to understand her children weren’t. And she gave our rat up. Told us exactly where to find him. We went. We found him. We completed our mission.”

“And after?”

“After? I decided my rat hunting days were over. Continuing meant learning to accept the risk, if not responsibility, for extreme collateral damage. I worried getting comfortable with the risk might eventually make it difficult to separate the rats from, say, my own reflection.”

“Shaun, you own no part of the responsibility for what some crazy extremist decided to do to evade justice.”

“We set events in motion. The hindsight view provides an interesting landscape of what-ifs.”

“What if your team never acted on the informant’s tip? What if the next building the rat blew up was an office tower where thousands of innocent people worked, or a school, or—?”

“All good questions. I don’t have the answers. I only have the what-ifs.”

Hoping he’d keep talking, she stayed silent, but started massaging the bunched-up muscles in his shoulders.

He let out a low sigh, and leaned back into her touch. “For a long time afterwards, every time I closed my eyes I went straight back to that night. Sometimes half the team is inside when the building blows. Sometimes just me. Sometimes I’m rushing to get there because I know it’s going to blow. I’m running balls out, using all my energy, but I’m not moving fast—I can’t make any progress. Ever had a dream like that?”

“Yes.” She offered the soft reassurance and kept soothing his shoulders. “It’s common.”

“The dream analysts say it means you can’t outrun your problems.”

“No, but you can share them. Want to know why you shared them with me tonight?”

The corners of his mouth tipped up into a tight grin. “Because you wouldn’t shut up until I talked?”

“No.” But she couldn’t restrain a smile of her own. She could be persistent. “You told me because you need something I can give you.”