On the way to his stateroom, he grabbed an MRE (Meals Ready-to-Eat) from the cabinet and a couple more electrolyte drinks and tossed them on his bed then closed the door. He’d eat after he showered. After that, he planned to sleep for at least three hours, five at the most.
The door to the stateroom across the hall opened with a squeak. A short time later, he heard it close again. Had to be Liz. Should he wait till later or talk to her now? Talk? Wrong word. Grovel would be more like it.
He had no idea what to say. Maybe she’d say it all, and he could agree. They’d smile, maybe shake hands, and that would be that. They’d move past this incident just like Drake, Reese, and he had moved on. Sounded like a foolproof plan. Dealing with her wouldn’t be as hard as he’d thought, so he opened his door and stepped in front of hers.
Tap, tap.
“Liz, we need to talk,” Mitch said.
“Go away. I’m trying to sleep.”
“You’re not asleep or you wouldn’t have heard me. So, let’s—”
She jerked open the door to her stateroom and glared into his face. Standing there with her hair still wet from a shower, he ached to push an errant strand from her cheek. But he didn’t.
“What do you want, Mitch? Exactlywhatdo you want from me?”
What did he want from her? He hadn’t expected that question. Didn’t exactly have an answer.
Even if he did, he was trapped in her scent of gardenias, the kind that grew in Hawaii, sweet and beautiful, blooming like velvet on a breeze, welcoming and sexy on a woman’s skin. The flowers that had given him a will to live when the thugs around him had figured otherwise.
She cocked her head in front of his, forcing him to concentrate on her, then waved her palm in his face. “Hellooooo, you said you wanted to talk. I’ve opened the door. Now, what do you want to talk about?”
His plan was not working. Besides, the dark circles under her eyes made him think twice about a smile and a handshake. Even through her tan, she seemed pale, looked physically exhausted. Or was that emotionally drained? Didn’t matter, he’d caused a lot of what she was feeling. She deserved more than his plan. “I…uh…”
His gaze traveled from her face to her toes. It would be so easy to reach out for her, pull her close, and finish what she’d started back on the Q40 with her kiss. But he didn’t. Instead, he skimmed back upward to the roundness of her breasts, her nipples clearly taut against the material.
“Hey!” She slammed his shoulder with her hand.
He looked up, and she gave him the two-finger your-eyes-on-my-eyes signal. Then, starting to close the door, she took a step backward into her room.
Without thinking, he braced his palm against the door. “I came to say…”
She waited.
Why couldn’t he say what he wanted to say? Because he didn’t know what the hell to say. Because he was sure she already knew what a jerk he could be. He sighed heavily. Because he was tired, too tired to think anymore.
“Evidently we don’t have anything to discuss, Mitch. Why don’t you get some rest? We’ll talk later.”
“I…”
Shaking her head, she pushed his hand from the door. “Go take a shower. Clean up. You look like hell.”
She closed the door in his face then clicked the lock.
His whole plan had fallen apart the moment she’d opened the door. Something about her standing her ground right in front of him had scuttled what brain waves he’d had before he’d knocked. There was nothing he could do about what had happened, but he wouldn’t let her get the edge on him ever again. He was the protector on this assignment, the only thing he had to concentrate on getting right. All she had to do was follow his orders.
He went back to his own stateroom and flipped on the shower in the stateroom’s small bathroom then peeled out of the Neoprene. Twisting to get a better look at his side in the mirror, he noticed the spot where he’d taken a hard kidney blow on the last assignment, which was still swollen, along with the yellow-green blackish shade of the bruise. If that didn’t fade in a few days, he’d have it checked out by OPAQUE’s doc.
His reflection in the mirror made him stop. Red, sleep-deprived eyes, overgrown stubble, scraggly hair, and lines bunched in his forehead hit him hard. Sure, he’d left one assignment to get to this one, but he’d done that other times with no problem. This time, the man looking back at him shouted he needed a break.
“Good luck with that, bucko,” he said to himself. “Too much evil in the world for any kind of rest.”
Liz had been right about one thing. He looked like hell.
She’d looked like heaven to him. Her wet, slicked-back hair with the scent of gardenia, her toenails sparkling with color, her slender ankles leading to her golden tan legs, to her thighs, to… He flicked the water to full ice cold.
Too bad. They were nothing more than protector and client, just the way he liked his life to run.
