“I can lift you if you don’t want your feet to get wet.”
“I’ll manage.”
Still, Francesca didn’t move, and Ryker grinned as he stepped to her side. “Give me one hand, and when you’re braced, even if the boat tips I’ll have you. Deal?”
She nodded tightly, but it took two tries before she would lift her hand to his. He gripped her forearm, and when she stood and the boat tipped—as he’d known it would—he swept her into his arms.
“Feet up,” he ordered, splashing through the shallows until he reached the shore. “Okay down.”
“The boat—”
“I’ll get the boat.”
Disrupted by their movement, the boat had slid off its rocks, but Ryker caught it easily enough, pulling it to safety and then further up onto the shore. As he remembered—and this time without the pain—there was a natural indentation in the brush that easily accommodated the small craft.
Francesca frowned, however, as he stepped back from it. “Won’t it get stolen?”
“That’s not going to be a problem,” Ryker shrugged. “We were watched the whole way into this inlet. I’m surprised we didn’t have Stefan’s agents waiting to hand us out of the boat. As it is, we should hurry.” He reached for her hand, tugging her into a well-worn pathway.
She let him pull her along. “How far are we from the city?” she asked. “I need to get to a bank.”
“Fifteen minutes, more or less, if we hurry.”
“No hurrying,” Francesca’s words were surprising enough to make him slow, and she shook her head as she surveyed him critically. “Unbutton your shirt and roll up your sleeves—maybe your trousers too? I want to go up through the crowds on the beach if we can. The more people the better.”
As he complied she pulled her own outfit apart, tying her shirt at her midriff and rolling up her trousers farther, exposing toned calves above her sandaled feet. She also shook out her hair and let it fall around her shoulders. It was longer than Ryker realized.
“Why don’t you wear it like that all the time?” he asked as they set off again.
“Too out of control,” she said, her voice clipped and final, her attention no longer on him. “Let’s make time here.”
Agreeable enough despite her change of manner, Ryker led her through the forest, moving quickly until they reached the edge of the residential district. “There’s a beach access—there,” he said, and tugged her down a sandier path until they stepped out on the wide expanse of Royal Beach.
Francesca was watching him curiously. “So…is this familiar?” she asked quietly.
“Yes—and no,” he said. “I don’t have any sense of threat here.”
She laughed. “Good. I’ve got enough for both of us. Walk beside me now, if that’s okay.”
They fell into step together, and her words came low and fast despite the fact that she swung her arms and laughed, the epitome of a vacationer in love. “We need to get to a bank, get euros. You’ll have to handle the transaction. The less I say the better, I’m more noticeable than you right now.”
He nodded and she kept going, walking him through the next step. When she asked for the bar closest to the marina, though, he hesitated. “The marina is almost certainly going to be watched,” he said.
“Not if they’re searching for us at my rented villa,” she shook her head. “We go behind them and they won’t think to double back.”
“Fair enough.”
After they’d visited the bank, the bar district was exactly as Ryker remembered it, but he had no attachment to this place either, other than knowing it was where men went to find pick-up dock work, boat work, and supplies. “It’s not a safe place for women,” he murmured as they approached the second to last tavern from the water, a seedy place with bars on the windows and crude, hand-painted signs on the door.
“I’ll wait in the street, but close, wringing my hands,” Francesca said. “We’ve been mugged, and I’m your girlfriend. Tell them that if they ask. But they probably won’t ask. Tell them you want the cheapest papers they can get you fast. Pay…” she blew out a breath. “I don’t know what the right amount is. Not too much though. You’ve been mugged and this was money I had hidden in my clothes. In fact, tell them that up front. No more than maybe seventy-five euros. You simply want to get home with no trouble.” She firmed her hand on his arm. “They won’t believe you, but that’s not the point. The point is that you give them a story they can remember and recite with feeling if anyone shows up later with a problem. Make sense?”
He frowned at her. “How do you know all of this?”
“Good,” she winked. “It makes sense. Now kiss me like you’re about to do something that makes you nervous. They’re watching inside.”
Ryker studied her, but not for too long. Francesca’s face had changed completely. She seemed frazzled, anxious as he squeezed both her hands, kissing her hard on the mouth.
As it had been the day before, the touch of Francesca’s lips against his was electric, but Ryker forced himself away, pleased that her eyes had gone wide…though in truth he couldn’t tell if it was an act or in reaction to his kiss.
