When the check came, Kat reached for her purse.
“Don’t even think about it,” Jeff growled. “My mother would tan my hide if she caught me inviting a woman out and then not paying for the date.”
Kat started. This hadn’t been a date-had it? Sure, there’d been romantic candlelight and the ocean and the sexy guy, of course. But a date? She didn’t do dates. She had no time for them.
Wary, she watched as he stood up and came around behind her chair to hold it for her. His fingertips trailed lightly along her bare shoulder, sending shivers shooting through her. Oh, God. He’d given her goose bumps. She silently prayed he wouldn’t notice her reaction to his touch.
“Can I tempt you into a walk along the beach?”
She hesitated to accept the offer. Whatever was happening between them was moving far too fast, slipping out of her control. Caution and control-those had been her mantras her whole life, and they’d never let her down so far.
Jeff coaxed, “I’m pretty sure it’s a felony to visit a tropical paradise and not walk on the beach by moonlight.”
Caution, indeed. This guy was a runaway freight train! “Jeff-” she started.
He effectively cut off her protest by pulling her seat back and cupping her elbow lightly. Caution and control fluttered away on a warm breeze that smelled of salt air and mystery. One touch from this guy and so much for a lifetime of training. She mentally shook her head in disgust at herself since Hidoshi wasn’t there to do it for her.
“Why so quiet all of a sudden?” Jeff asked as they headed toward the water.
She glanced over at him, surprised. “I’m always quiet.”
“You don’t say much, but I can hear you thinking most of the time.”
Startled, she stopped in the act of bending down to kick off her high-heeled sandals. “How?”
“I suppose I’m reading body language. Your eyes are always moving, you’re always assessing everything and everyone around you.”
“Like you’re not? All special operators do that as a matter of habit.”
He shrugged. “It’s more than a habit with you. It’s like you’re always waiting for the next attack. You don’t always have to be on duty, you know.”
She stopped. Turned to face him. The moonlight sculpted his features in pale relief. The man had definitely hit the jackpot in the genetic lottery of looks. “It’s not about being on duty or off. This is who I am.”
If it was possible for a marble statue to convey skepticism, he did so then, staring down at her for a long time in silence. Finally, he said, “You mean to tell me you have no feelings? No desires? No personal life? Just the job?”
Frustration roiled through her. Of course she had those things. But they were private. To be kept to oneself. Never on display for others to see. “I am not, at heart, American. I am Asian. Old school.”
“What does that mean?”
“I was taught not to wear my emotions on my sleeve as you Americans do. I was taught to be…” She didn’t know what word to use next. Refined? That would insult him by implying that Americans were coarse. Restrained? That sounded like she hog-tied her feelings and totally denied them. Repressed? Probably accurate, but not exactly something she liked owning up to.
“Kiss me,” he ordered abruptly.
Rattled to her core, she sputtered, “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. I’m not convinced you actually have any emotions at all. Prove it.”
“By kissing you?”
“By kissing me.” He braced his feet in the sand, his expression implacable as he stared down at her.
“This is ridiculous. I’m not letting you double-dare me into kissing you like a couple of kids in the schoolyard.”
“Ahh. So you’re a coward, too,” he commented blandly. “I wouldn’t have guessed it. I pegged you for more courage than that.”
Courage? He dared to question her courage? “Is this the part where I fling myself at you and kiss your lights out to prove how brave and emotional I am?” she retorted scornfully.
“It would help. I’m beginning to have serious doubts over whether or not a heart beats inside your chest or if there’s only a robot ticking in there. Which is it?”
Hurt streaked through her. After all his talk of Cupid’s Bolt and destiny, how could he say something like that? She whispered, mostly to herself, “Sometimes I ask myself the same question.”
He stepped forward so quickly she had no time to evade him. Or maybe something deep inside her didn’t want to evade him. Either way, his arms came around her gently, wrapping her in the warmth and shelter of his body. “Ahh, baby, I’ve looked into your soul. You’re all woman in there. You just have to learn to let her out.”
Easier said than done. A lifetime of teaching said to do otherwise.
Jeff murmured, “It’s not hard. Watch. Like this.”
And before she knew what was happening, he’d put his finger under her chin and lifted her mouth to meet his. Shock ripped through her, followed by a melting warmth that all but buckled her legs out from under her. It was an innocent enough kiss, just his lips, warm and firm and gentle on hers. No demands, no invasions, no assertion of macho dominance. And it was all the more seductive for the lack of aggression.
His hair was silky beneath her fingers-how in bloody hell did her hands get around his neck and into his hair? As quickly as the question exploded in her brain, the answer followed, a soft sigh of surrender deep in her soul. Who cared how they got there? The fact was her arms were twined around his neck, her breasts pressed intimately against his chest, his belt buckle jabbing her belly, his muscular thigh rubbing the junction of her thighs as his right arm drew her up more tightly against him.
Oh, my. He felt so…right.
His left hand slid under the weight of her hair at her neck, cupping her head as he sipped at her, kissing and nibbling until a foreign irritation built low in her gut, a driving need for more-more of his touch, more of his mouth and hands upon her, more skin on skin, more everything.
She raised up on tiptoe, her mouth opening beneath his, her kisses abruptly-and wholly independent of her will-eager and demanding. Something wild within her wanted more than a hint of this unleashed man. She wanted his passion, his body; heck, his soul.
Jeff broke off the kiss, thankfully panting as hard as she was. It was with extreme reluctance that she let him go. Only the threat of seeming obsessive and clingy unwound her arms from around his neck. But damn if her palms didn’t land on his chest, measuring the bulge of his pectorals. A whole lot of push-ups had gone into those.
“See, Kat? There’s a passionate woman in there, waiting to get out.” He spoke lightly, but she guessed at the effort that carefree tone took.
His arms fell away and she stumbled back in the deep sand, appalled. She’d just kissed her boss. With tongue. While squirming against him like a cat in heat.
She swore long and hard at herself in every language she knew.
They stood there an embarrassingly long time, both catching their breath and staring at one another in varying degrees of shock. He looked as shaken by what had just happened as she was. Her thoughts spun frantically. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? Had she been a terrible kisser? Was he having second thoughts about his Cupid’s Bolt? What if-
She broke off her panicked train of thought sharply. These sorts of thoughts were exactly why she’d sworn off relationships entirely by the time she’d graduated from college. She just didn’t need the insecurity and uncertainty of it all.
“I-”
“You-”
They spoke simultaneously, and she was quickest to murmur, “You first.”
He huffed in what sounded like frustration. “I ought to apologize, but the only thing I can think of is to ask you to do that again with me. That was…amazing.”
The tone in his voice on that last word was almost worshipful. Abject relief turned her innards to jelly. “Really?”
He opened his mouth to answer and she waved a sharp hand to cut him off. “Strike that. I’m not sixteen and don’t need the boy to tell the girl he liked kissing her. If you liked it, you’ll do it again sometime. If not, I’ll live.”
He swept her up in his arms before the words had hardly escaped her lips. His mouth swooped down on hers this time with all the aggression-and finesse-she’d expect of a hunky Special Forces soldier who’d had his pick of women for most of his adult life. His body, his mouth, his hands, his essence, surrounded her, drew her in to him until she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began. It was much more than a kiss. It was a blending of souls. She was staggered by the sensations, both physical and emotional, that he evoked in her so effortlessly.
When he finally lifted his head to smile down at her, she could only stare up at him in shock.
He remarked matter-of-factly, “All right then. I believe we’ve established that I like kissing you and plan to do it again. Thoroughly and often.”
Her toes curled into the cold sand, squishing it up between her toes pleasurably. Thoroughly and often, huh? Her pulse leaped at the thought.
He added ruefully, “I promised you a walk on the beach, didn’t I? And I never break a promise.” He gestured at the silver strip of sand stretching away from them. “Which do you want? The ocean side or shore side?”
“Which side would your mother tell you to take?”
He grinned. “She’d tell me to walk on the ocean side where the water’s deepest and coldest and let you dribble your tender little toes in the foam.”
“Well, let’s not disappoint your mother,” she replied lightly.
He laughed warmly. “Honey, when you give her grand-kids, she’ll think you walk on water.”
Kids? Them? The mere thought knocked her completely off balance. Jeff steered her along the water’s edge, mindful of her tender little toes. Which was ridiculous, of course. The two of them regularly swam in water much colder than this as part of their training. They both had experienced depths of hypothermia most people never imagined, let alone suffered through. With her small body mass and low body fat, cold water training was particularly miserable for her.
“What are you thinking about?” he murmured. “You’re frowning.”
She started. She never showed facial expressions if she didn’t want to, and at the moment she wasn’t going out of her way to exhibit a frown, thank you very much. “I am not frowning,” she disagreed.
He stopped and turned to face her. “Are too. I can feel you frowning without even having to look at you.”
If she weren’t consciously focusing on her expression at the moment, her brows definitely would have slammed together in a big frown. “What? Are you psychic?” she asked lightly.
“It’s Cupid’s Bolt. We’ve got a connection, darlin’. I’m tellin’ ya. We were meant for one another.”
“What’s my mood now?”
He grinned. “You’re annoyed that I read you like an open book, but it doesn’t take being psychic to know that. You’re also wildly attracted to me and confused as hell over what to do about it.”
“That’s a pretty good pickup line. I bet you get lots of girls with the whole ‘destined for each other by Cupid’s arrow’ bit.”
One second she was walking down a starlit beach, and the next he’d spun her around to stare up into the face of fury. Although dark shadows shrouded his features, she couldn’t miss the genuine anger rolling off him.
“I’ve never spoken of that to any woman, let alone experienced it with one. It’s a long and honored tradition in my family, and I would never use it as a cheap pickup line.” His gaze narrowed even more. “Trust me. I don’t need a line like that to get laid. I get all the girls I want without it.”
After that kiss he’d planted on her, she didn’t doubt it. But then a second reaction overcame her. She struggled for a moment to identify it, and then froze in shock. She was jealous. She staggered back from him, stunned that the idea of him sleeping around with women he casually picked up bothered her so much. Something was wrong with her. Her emotions were flying all over the place. She was never like this! Her hormones must be out of whack. Or maybe she hadn’t gotten enough sleep recently.
Formally, she said, “I apologize if I offended you or your family’s honor.” She made a low bow of apology with her palms pressed together before her.
She straightened, and Jeff was peering at her quizzically.
“What?” she muttered. “That’s how I was taught to apologize.”
“Why the bow?”
“If you wanted to strike me, I was giving you an opening to do it.”
“Why in hell would I want to do that?”
“To save face, of course.”
Comprehension lit his face. “You really were raised in traditional Asian fashion, weren’t you?”
“You have no idea.”
His hand touched her upper arm and then slid down to her hand. He turned, tucking her hand in his elbow and commenced walking. “Tell me about it.”
She never talked about it. Not the grueling hours of workouts, not the secret training methods that elevated her skills beyond what most mortals dreamed of, not the traditional code of honor, passed down for centuries from warrior to warrior. Nor did she talk about the slow death of the ancient way of life that had forced Hidoshi to pass his legacy on to an orphan girl he’d picked up out of a gutter.
Jeff murmured, “I’ll tell you about my life if you’ll tell me about yours.”
To her shock, she heard her voice say, “I was born in Seoul, Korea. My grandfather was from Japan. He raised me on a small farm in the country.”
Hidoshi hadn’t been her blood relative as far as she knew, but he’d adopted her in an ancient, if not legally recognized, ceremony. More to the point, he’d pulled her off the streets where she’d been wandering as a toddler and had likely saved her life. And then there was everything else. Her education, her martial arts training, the affection and respect he quietly gave her. Somehow, calling him her grandfather wasn’t nearly description enough of what he’d meant to her.
“You love him a great deal, don’t you?” Jeff murmured.
How did he do that? If she didn’t know better, she’d say the guy was, indeed, psychic, the way he picked her thoughts out of thin air. “He meant everything to me.”
“Past tense. He passed away?”
She nodded.
“When?”
Under normal circumstances, she’d politely change the subject about now, or if someone waxed persistent, she’d tell them outright it was none of their business. But for some reason, she found herself completely lacking in her usual reluctance to talk to Jeff about Hidoshi.
“He died when I was seventeen.”
“How did you end up in the States?”
To her knowledge, she’d never answered that question to a single living soul. Only a few anonymous clerks in the American consulate in Seoul knew once and had hopefully forgotten long ago. Jeff stopped walking and turned to face her as if he knew this was something very private and personal to her. He could really stop doing that.
She ventured to look up at him and was startled at the depth of compassion glowing in his gaze. It wrapped around her, offering comfort and quiet understanding. In her own sudden flash of insight, she realized he’d lost someone very close to him, as well. He knew the pain, the loss and bewilderment of her entire world evaporating in an instant. And maybe that was why she answered his question.
“When I was going through his personal effects, I found something.”
Jeff waited patiently, merely patting her hand a little in encouragement.
“My birth certificate. I’d never seen it before. I didn’t know-” She hadn’t even known her mother’s name until then. It had never occurred to her that Hidoshi might have tracked the woman down in the opium dens of Seoul’s slums and found a nameless orphan’s identity for her. His quiet, un-swerving love, even in death, had moved her to her first and only tears after he’d died.
Kat glanced up and realized she’d just been standing there, remembering, and Jeff was still patting her hand.
She continued, startled by the catch in her voice. “I didn’t know my father was American. I took my birth certificate and went to the American consulate in Seoul. They researched it and found out he was a serviceman stationed in Korea at the time I was born and was known to keep a Korean mistress. They decided my birth certificate was legitimate and issued me a U.S. passport. All of a sudden, I was an American citizen.”
“Have you ever met him?”
“I doubt he knows I exist.” A spurt of shame took her by surprise. She’d thought she’d gotten over that long ago. She shrugged. “But it’s okay. I had everything I needed growing up. I had no need to drop into some foreigner’s life and ruin it.”
“You’re a remarkable woman. Any man would be proud to call you his daughter.”
Suspicious heat filled her eyes. She said lightly, “I have to give your mother credit. She certainly taught you good manners.”
He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. “I didn’t say that to be polite, dammit. I mean it. You’re smart and beautiful and athletic as hell. You’ve got it all.”
That’s what they all said. Hearing the same old line from Jeff disappointed her. She sighed, then replied emotionlessly. “You’re doing what everyone does-judging me purely based on what you can see. You don’t know me at all.”
“Ahh, but that’s where you’re wrong. We’re alike, you and I. We’re soldiers. We live by a code of honor most other people scoff at, but we don’t care. We can and do kill without regret. It’s part of keeping our country safe, so we do it. We take our work seriously and have both made sacrifices, particularly in our personal lives, to do this job we love.”
She blinked up at him as he fell silent. She supposed they did know a lot about each other after all, just by the nature of the profession they shared. It took a certain type of person to do what they did.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t usually climb on that soapbox. And besides, you know that chorus already.” He turned and they continued down the beach in silence.
They’d walked for maybe another ten minutes when Kat noticed lights nestled in the midst of a verdant forest carpeting the mountain that rose steeply on their right. “What’s that up there?”
“The Gray estate.”
“It looks white to me.”
Jeff chuckled. “The mansion is white. But the owners are Carson and Lucy Gray. They own about half of this island.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. He comes from a shipping family. Owns a big fleet of container ships. He donated the caves to us, in fact. His wife is American. A geologist of some kind. Supervised the construction of the H.O.T. Watch facilities. They have three or four kids now. Nice family. I see them on the beach sometimes.”
“How long has the H.O.T. Watch complex been operating?” Kat asked curiously.
“Construction started about five years ago. It’s been up and running for about a year.”
She nodded. “That would explain why I haven’t heard of it before now.”
He grinned over at her. “You have your secret Medusa Project, and I have mine.”
She smiled back. “Touché.”
Without warning, her purse erupted into sound, her cell phone emitting the custom ring that indicated the office was calling. Simultaneously, Jeff reached for his buzzing cell phone.
She flipped open her phone. “Go ahead.” No need to identify herself. Anyone who had this number knew who she was.
“Jennifer Blackfoot here. Sorry to interrupt your evening, but we need you and Maverick back here. There’s been another robbery.”