Shiver (33 page)

“Won’t happen,” he interjected. “It’s getting all better. It’s
sore, but I’ll live. A little time, a little ointment, a few Band-Aids, and I’ll be good as new.”

Sam frowned doubtfully. “Band-Aids?”

“Band-Aids,” he repeated, then twitched his robe aside so that she could see his leg. As he’d said, instead of yards of gauze over layers of sterile padding, which was what had adorned his thigh the last time she’d seen it, a single large Band-Aid was plastered over the place where the bullet had gone in. She goggled at it.

“See?”

From practically the hem of his boxers to the top of his knee, his thigh was black and blue. It still looked slightly swollen and definitely painful, but somehow the Band-Aid made it look much less potentially disabling than before.

“It looks better,” she admitted.

“I heal fast.” He frowned at her. “How about you give me your word that you won’t go running off without at least giving me a heads-up first?”

“You’d stop me,” she objected.

The flicker in his eyes told her that she’d hit the nail on the head. But he didn’t admit it. “Hell, I’d probably go with you. Because I’m assuming that you wouldn’t go haring off on your own without good reason, and if you come across a reason good enough to make you think you ought to take Tyler and run, then I should probably be hauling ass out of here, too.”

“You are so full of crap.”

Again he almost smiled. “Maybe.” His eyes held hers. “Come
on, Sam. Are you really going to make me sleep on the floor outside your door tonight?”

“It’s tempting.” Sam looked at him meditatively. “Okay, I give you my word,” she said, and wasn’t even sure whether she was lying or not.

His expression was impossible to read. But all he said was, “Good.” Then he handed her cash and knife back to her. Just like that.

“Thank you,” she said, trying not to sound surprised as she thrust them down into her front pocket.

There was something there in the depths of his eyes as he watched her that made her heart speed up again.

“Don’t ever play poker, Sam,” he said softly. Then as she frowned at him, trying to work that out, he slid a hand under her chin, leaned forward, and kissed her.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I
t had nothing to do with the damned pain pills. Tonight he was the opposite of high as a kite, and the sexual voltage between them was still off the charts. That was the unwelcome knowledge that tore like a bullet through Danny’s brain at the first surprised flutter of Sam’s lips beneath his. Rampant desire so hot it would have put a flamethrower to shame raised his temperature by about a thousand degrees as soon as he yielded to the damned stupid impulse of a moment and kissed her. Then she made a tiny sound and her lips parted to let him in, and his gut clenched and he went instantly hard and for a minute there he wasn’t thinking at all.

Her mouth was warm and wet, sweet and seductive. Her tongue welcomed his with an eagerness that sent his libido into turbocharge mode. He kissed her hungrily, fiercely, until he felt the cool silk of her hands start to slide up around his neck.

Then he had a second, just a second, of clarity.

But it was enough.

Opening his eyes, he forced his mind to function, steeled his will.

Catching her arms before they could lock around his neck, he freed his mouth from hers, lifted his head. And found himself looking down at rosy, full lips damp with his kiss, delicate nose, fringes of flirty black lashes lying against pale, smooth cheeks. With sooty tendrils of hair framing the fine-featured oval of her face, she was so beautiful she made his breath stop.

He’d started getting turned on when he had frisked her, which was why he had stopped with the job only half done. Having succumbed to the urge to kiss her just now simply because she’d looked so damned guilty and vulnerable and sweet, he was paying the price: he wanted her so badly he hurt with it.

You fucking idiot.

“Sam.”

Her eyes had opened when he had caught her arms. Danny found himself drowning in pools of intense blue. The passion he saw in them made him burn. The promise of hot, intense, mind-blowing sex crackled in the air. It would be so easy, so damned easy, to give her what she so clearly wanted, to reward himself with what he was dying to have, to take her to bed and rock her world and see if he couldn’t make his own world a little brighter, too.

For a moment, as they stared at each other, the issue hung in the balance. He was so aroused that despite every resolution he had made to the contrary he wasn’t sure he had the iron control that he was going to need to step away.

Then her brows snapped together in a frown.

“Forget about it, Marco.” Her voice was a little husky, her breathing a little fast, but the determination in her tone was unmistakable. He felt the quick rise and fall of her breasts against his chest. The warmth of her, the softness of her, the sweet scent of her, all combined to make him burn. She pulled her arms from his hold, took a step back. He let her go.

By calling him Marco, she had opened a tiny little window that allowed a few beams of sanity to reach his brain. The danger hadn’t gone away. He still needed to be clearheaded. He still couldn’t afford the distraction.

But he wanted her. Jesus, he wanted her.

She said, “I’m not doing this. No way.”

Thank the Lord she had the sense to call a halt, because right at that moment he was having trouble getting there. He was practically clenching his teeth to keep from reaching for her again.

She said, “I’m going to bed. Good night.”

He said nothing as she turned and left him, padding barefoot down the hall with her head held high. Tall and willowy, her tank top clinging in a way that showed off her narrow rib cage and small waist, her jeans hugging her absolutely world-class ass and long slim legs, with the kind of sway to her walk that would make a eunuch pant, she took his breath away. If he hadn’t been in so highly charged a state, and fighting it so doggedly, he would have smiled at the fierceness of her as she walked away from him.

The girl had attitude. Balls. By putting the brakes on something
he knew she was as hungry to have happen as he was, she had surprised him once again. Jesus, he was ready to walk over hot coals barefoot to find out what she would be like in bed. Would she be sweet? Or wild?

Imagining the possibilities set him on fire all over again.

But whether she was hot stuff in the sack or not, taking her to bed wasn’t on the agenda. Getting her and her kid to safety was what he needed to be focusing on. What he
was
going to focus on.

Just give him a couple of seconds.

Danny stood where he was for another minute or so, willing himself to chill out with only so-so success. Then he turned and headed for his bedroom. Since arriving at the town house, he’d slept with his bedroom door open, the better to keep an eye and an ear on Tyler and Sam. Sam slept with her bedroom door open, too, to listen for Tyler, he knew. And Tyler’s bedroom door was left open, probably so Sam could hear him if he cried out in the night.

But a moment ago Sam had shut her bedroom door with a decided snap, which he had taken as another manifestation of
ain’t happening
directed at him. And now he was closing his, too. And locking it. And turning on the radio that also served as an alarm clock, the better to keep from being overheard.

His bedroom was the smallest of the three, and simple: white walls, beige carpet, a framed landscape over a double bed. Plain oak headboard, oak nightstand with a lamp and the clock radio, oak chest. Navajo looking bedspread, and in one corner a small brown armchair.

He sat down in the armchair—it was a rocker, he discovered, upholstered in some kind of plush—and started taking apart his right crutch. The handful of Advil he had popped maybe an hour before had taken the edge off his leg, but it still hurt like hell. He was just getting better at ignoring it. His finger, his bruises, and other injuries, they were healing, and he barely noticed them now. They were nothing he hadn’t suffered before. His worst problem at the moment was that he was horny as hell and stuck with it, no relief in sight. In fact, he was getting ready to make sure that the woman he was jazzed with lust over to the point where he was having trouble thinking about anything except taking her to bed was whisked away out of his reach.

With the crutch lying dismantled near his feet, he snapped the battery back into the cell phone and turned it on. A second later, it flickered to life. He punched in a number that only a few people knew, and waited.

“Panterro,” he identified himself to the man who answered. Using his real name felt risky—when he was undercover he did his best to forget it—but this situation had gone so far off the rails that the rules he usually operated by had flown out the window. Besides, unless the house was bugged, no one was listening. And if Veith or the Zetas knew where the house was, bugging it wouldn’t be what they did, so talking freely should be safe.

“Danny.” Associate Deputy Director Keith Mayhew didn’t sound particularly glad to hear from him. Which Danny could understand. Last time they’d talked, which had been about six
months previously, Danny had just completed an undercover operation into a foreign government that provided prostitutes for members of Congress and other high-ranking officials, then videotaped and subsequently blackmailed them. The fallout hadn’t been pretty, and the director’s office had caught significant flack. Fortunately he and Mayhew went further back than that, all the way back to when Mayhew, as special agent in charge of the Houston office, had hired him straight out of college. “What bad news do you have for me now?”

“None.” Danny almost smiled at the resigned tone in the older man’s voice. “I’m on assignment. I need a favor.”

“So lay it on me.”

Danny gave him a quick rundown of the situation. “Bottom line, I got two civilians in the line of fire. I want them out of it.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

“Send a crew you trust to get them out of here. Take ’em back to Washington or somewhere and protect the hell out of them until I get this over with.”

“They’re that important to you, hmm?”

Until Mayhew said it, Danny hadn’t really thought about it that way. But the truth was, protecting civilians usually happened on a pay grade level way below Mayhew’s. What Danny was asking for was a five-star, gold-plated personal favor. He recognized that Mayhew wouldn’t forget it, that he’d be throwing it in Danny’s face at the most inopportune moments for the rest of his professional life. Danny thought of Sam, and Tyler, and concluded,
worth it.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You got it.” Mayhew wasn’t one to waste time when he didn’t have to. “Some reason you’re not taking this to your AIC?”

His agent in charge would be Crittenden. And no, Danny didn’t feel like he could take this to him. Like Sanders, Crittenden would consider Sam and Tyler as not critical to the mission.

“I want them completely out of this,” he said. “And I want them kept safe.”

“Any way I can get in touch with you? I don’t suppose you want me to call you back at this number.”

“No.”

“I’ll set it up. Operation Romeo. You’ll be hearing from me shortly.”

Mayhew hung up before Danny could say thanks.

The name Mayhew had chosen for the operation, Romeo, registered as Danny removed the battery from the cell phone again, and wrung a wry smile from him as he considered it. One thing was for sure, it hadn’t been chosen at random. Mayhew never did anything at random. Restoring the phone to its hiding place, reassembling the crutch, he thought back over what he had said. He’d given the associate deputy director only the briefest of thumbnail sketches of who Sam and Tyler were, so how Mayhew had divined his romantic interest in Sam he had no clue. Except the operation name told him that he had; it was Mayhew’s way of taking a dig at him. The only explanation was that there must have been something in his tone as he’d talked about her. Plus, Mayhew knew him pretty well.

Whatever, just as soon as Mayhew got Sam and Tyler out of there, he’d sleep a whole lot better.

The clock was running down. The word on the street would be that Marco was going to be playing show-and-tell any day now, and the Zetas, with their wide-flung contacts, would have picked that up. By now the cartel would be getting desperate, and since the purpose of the assignment was for him to provide a decoy while the real Rick Marco gave chapter and verse to the government, the path that led to this safe house would be followable. It wouldn’t be easy to find, but it would be there, because it was supposed to be there. All he had to do was stay one step ahead of Veith and/or any other cartel enforcers until Marco was done, and then Marco would go into witness protection and he, Danny, would be finished with one more assignment and free to live his life until the next one. In St. Louis, however, staying one step ahead of the hit squad on Marco’s tail had not worked out so well, and the more Danny thought about it the more that bothered him. The key was for him to get out of this alive, and that almost hadn’t happened. Either somebody had fucked up big time, or . . . or what? He didn’t know. What he did know was that here, although the marshals had him under round-the-clock protection and Crittenden and his team were supposed to be set up somewhere nearby monitoring the house as well as keeping tabs on any suspicious movements on the part of any known cartel associates such as Veith, he was starting to feel uneasy.