The Unsung Hero (36 page)
She snatched her dress back, holding it up in front of her like a shield. As a dress, it was exceptional. However, as a shield, it didn’t function well at all.
“Sorry,” he said, nearly knocking the chair over as he stood up. “I needed to get on-line, and I didn’t think you’d mind. I’ll get out of your way.” He turned back to the computer. “Just let me—”
“Wait.” Kelly moved closer to the computer, looking at the picture of the Merchant that was on the screen. “Is that . . . him?”
When she stood next to Tom, the dress worked even less well as a shield. Her entire back half was exposed. He forced himself not to look, but his peripheral vision was too damn good. She was wearing her trademark thong. In dark purple satin. Against pale skin. Dear God.
Tom sat back down so that she was slightly behind him, out of peripheral range.
Yes, they were having dinner tonight. Yes, he’d kissed her again while they were in Boston. Yes, he was intending to kiss her again tonight. And yes, very big yes, he wanted to explore all the wonderful possibilities of where this mutual attraction could go.
One of the possible places was back here, in Kelly’s room, with the door tightly shut the way it was, with Kelly in only her underwear, also the way she was.
But there was a lot of talking that needed to be done before they reached that place. And as much as every cell in his body was screaming for him to stand up right now and take her into his arms, to slide his hands all over all that smooth, perfect skin, communication was key. The talking part had to come first.
It had to.
She trusted him.
She was looking at the picture on the computer screen, waiting for him to answer her question. Is that him?
Tom cleared his throat. “Yeah, that’s um . . .” What’s his name. “The Merchant. Before plastic surgery.”
“Can I see what he looks like after plastic surgery?” she asked.
“No,” he said, “I don’t have any recent photos of him. He’s been presumed dead since ’96. I’m assuming he had his face changed sometime between then and now.”
She moved back into his peripheral vision range, looking at him instead of the screen. At this proximity, her eyes were an illegal shade of blue. “Assuming?”
“It’s what I would’ve done if I were him.” He tried not to sound desperate. “Can you do me a huge favor and put on a robe?”
She gave him what he was starting to recognize as her innocent face. The wide-eyed one that really wasn’t very innocent at all. She was enjoying this. “You mean the one you’re sitting on?”
Tom stood up, and she pulled something that might’ve been a bathrobe off the back of the chair, showering the floor with a rain of lingerie.
Of course.
It was bad enough to sit here surrounded by it when she wasn’t in the room. But when she was there . . . It was like finding out that Pollyanna modeled for Victoria’s Secret on the sly. And then being invited to a photo shoot.
“Whoops,” she said, “that’s the clean stuff.”
She slipped on the robe—if you could call something that was made of very thin cotton and came only to midthigh a robe—tossed her dress onto her bed this time, then gathered up the “clean stuff,” throwing it into her top dresser drawer. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen the belt anywhere, have you?”
Dear Christ, there was no belt to this so-called robe. “No, but I bet if you give Mrs. Lerner a miner’s helmet and forty-eight hours, she could find it.”
Kelly laughed. “It’s not that bad in here.”
“Do you keep anything in your closet? I mean, what’s the point in even having a closet?”
“I’m very neat back home—in my apartment in Boston.” She rummaged through the piles of clothing on a chair next to her bed. “I think I’ve been resisting putting my clothes away because if I do, that’s like admitting I’m really living here again. Dealing with my father’s illness is hard enough without having to focus on my personal failure issues at the same time.”
She found the belt—thank you, Lord Jesus—and threaded it through the loops of her robe, tying it shut in the front.
“Failure issues?” he echoed.
“Pass,” she said. “That’s too pathetic a topic—and I’m in too good a mood. And my mood got even better when I got home and found my father sitting out on the deck with Joe. Do you know they spent the entire day together—without anyone needing extra oxygen?”
Tom let her change the subject. He had plenty of failure issues of his own, and God knows he didn’t want to talk about them right now. The fact that his CAT scan had come back normal, that there wasn’t an obvious if not easy fix to his physical problems, was also high on his list of topics to avoid.
“Yeah, they spent the early part of the afternoon staking out the hotel for me again. I told them it could be just a waste of time, but they don’t care. They sit in the hotel, playing chess, watching for any suspicious-looking men.” Tom laughed. “Kind of a vague order, but they’re okay with it. I think they like having an excuse to hang together. And I’ve told them I won’t let them help me if they fight. So they don’t fight. At least not in front of me.”
“Bless you,” Kelly said. “I can’t tell you how glad I am you’re here.”
Her eyes were too warm, and that robe was too short. Tom tried not to look at her legs.
Talk about failure issues. He was failing completely.
He had to get out of here. Fast. Before he kissed her again. Which would be fine later, downstairs, when they were both fully dressed. But as for right now . . .
“Tell me more about the Merchant.” Before he could stand up and lunge for the door, Kelly blocked his way and sent the conversation rocketing back in another direction. “Do you have any other photos? Anything that really shows his eyes?”
She came up right behind him, spinning his chair back so he faced the computer, resting her hands possessively on his shoulders. He liked that she did that. Too much. Yes, he had to get out of here.
“Even if he had plastic surgery, he can’t really change his eyes, can he?” she asked. “I mean, he could change the color, sure, but color’s just a small part of it. The intensity would stay the same. Look at his eyes in this picture—scary.”
She started rubbing his shoulders, and Tom knew damn well that he wasn’t going anywhere. Especially not when her hands were cool against the back of his neck, her fingers in his hair.
Tom used the mouse to click through a series of pictures. The aftermath of the Paris embassy bombing. Five devastating café bombings in Afghanistan, a bus bombing in Israel. And then the Merchant. Most of the photos were taken from a distance, slightly blurred. But the last one was again in close-up. WildCard had done his computer voodoo on it, enhancing it, sharpening the edges. It was definitely the Merchant, smiling at the woman who was to become his wife, taken about a year before Paris.
Kelly leaned closer, and he could feel the softness of her body against his shoulder. He could smell her sweet scent. It wasn’t perfume—it was probably some kind of lotion or maybe her shampoo or soap. Whatever it was, it made her smell delicious.
“In this one, he doesn’t look like a monster,” she said. “He looks like a regular man. A man who likes this woman—look at the way he’s looking at her. He’s crazy about her. He can’t be all bad.”
“He’s claimed responsibility for the deaths of over nine hundred people,” Tom told her.
“God,” she breathed, taking an even closer look. “No wonder you’re worried he’s still out there. I could see how someone like that might stay on your mind.”
“I keep thinking he’s the perfect man to succeed with a full-scale, high death-toll terrorist attack here in the U.S. He’s not some amateur—he knows what he’s doing. Yet he’s not being watched twenty-four–seven like all the other big league players we do know about. He’s invisible because he’s on everyone’s presumed-dead list. It was probably laughably easy for him to get into the country.” He shook his head. “Unless he’s on everyone’s presumed-dead list because he is dead.”
Which meant Tom was the dangerous one, the complete fucking nut job who was going to start killing innocent salesmen from Des Moines or Cincinnati, imagining they were hard-core terrorists.
Kelly was rubbing his neck again, her fingers strong and cool against the heat of his skin. It was definitely time to leave before his eyes started rolling back in his head, before he came to the conclusion that talking was way overrated, that what he really wanted was a whole lot of nonverbal communication, and who really gave a damn about trust anyway?
It took a great deal of effort, but Tom cleared the screen, signed off the computer, and slipped out of both her hands and the chair. “I’m going to go take a shower.” His voice sounded as ragged as if he’d just run ten miles, fast.
Her robe met in the front in a V that was growing deeper every moment. He caught a flash of dark purple against the soft, pale swell of her breasts, and as he looked up into her eyes, he knew the battle was lost.
She knew it, too.
He lunged for her as she reached for him, and then, God, she was in his arms and he was kissing her.
And she was kissing him back just as hungrily, her soft body tight against his.
Tom caught himself before he peeled her robe from her shoulders, forcing himself to slow down, to kiss her more tenderly and less ferociously, to stay in control, to keep from devouring her whole.
She was everything he wanted, everything he’d always stayed far, far away from.
Dinner first.
Talking first.
She trusted him.
Breathing hard, he pulled back. He could see the promise of paradise in her eyes. But the woman trusted him, dammit. “I’ll meet you on the deck for dinner in about an hour, okay?”
She smiled at him. “If that’s what you want.”
Tom headed for the door, then took two steps back toward Kelly. “You know damn well what I want. I’m trying to be good here. I’m trying to do this right.”
She didn’t say a word, didn’t argue, didn’t do a damn thing but just stand there in her barely-there robe, looking at him. Wanting him, too, and letting him see it in her eyes.
“See, there’s no way this could work,” he told her. “I’m going to be here for only a few weeks. And even if we could keep it going long-distance—and I’ve got to be honest here, Kelly, I’ve never been able to keep any relationship going for more than a few months—you deserve better than that.”
She took a step toward him.
“My future’s . . . a little shaky right now,” he told her, “but I can tell you that I intend to do everything in my control to hang on to my career with the SEAL teams. I can also tell you that a romantic relationship with a SEAL is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. These next few weeks I’m here in Baldwin’s Bridge—this is probably going to be the longest time I spend in any one place in the U.S. this year. I’m always moving, Kel, always heading out someplace new, usually overseas. Deployment’s usually without warning, so I don’t even get a chance to phone home to say good-bye. I’m just gone. And when I come back, I can’t talk about where I’ve been or what I’ve done. And there’s always a chance I might not come back at all.”
She took another step toward him and another and she was close enough now to touch.
Tom couldn’t stop himself. He touched her. Her hair, her cheek, the warmth of her neck. She closed her eyes, pressing her cheek into his hand, her lips slightly parted. Her skin was smooth and so soft.
“A woman’s got to be pretty tough,” he whispered, “to put up with that.”
She was touching him now, too, her hands skimming his forearms. And when she opened her eyes, they were filled with both heat and need. “I’m tougher than you think.”
Tom didn’t laugh—at least not aloud. He didn’t even let his lips twitch. But somehow she knew he didn’t believe her.
“I am.” She ran her hands up to his shoulders, down the front of his uniform shirt.
He kissed her. He couldn’t help himself, not when she was gazing at him so fiercely and touching him like that. He kissed her as slowly and as sweetly as he could, careful to keep his own explosive desire on the shortest possible leash. He felt her melt against him, heard her sigh as he pushed her robe off one perfect shoulder.
Jesus, somebody stop him.
He pulled her robe back.
“Maybe we should take this a little more slowly.” He couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of his mouth. But then again, he couldn’t believe he was standing here in Kelly Ashton’s bedroom, with Kelly Ashton in his arms, nearly naked beneath her thin cotton robe. God help him, the way she was pressed against him, she couldn’t miss feeling his arousal.
He knew he should step back, put some space between them, but he was only human, dammit, and he kissed her again. He could feel his control slipping and he worked harder to make his kisses gentle. Respectful. Reverent.
The kind of kisses Kelly Ashton would want.
“Ah, baby, I don’t want to hurt you,” he told her hoarsely. “And I’m so afraid I will. Even under the best of circumstances, I don’t have much to offer a woman like you. And right now . . .”
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