Page 18 of Beachcomber Danger

“We need to talk before we get back to the shack and I’d bet my left nut the Jeep is bugged.”

“So you’ve said. You sound all sexy-spy. You sure you’re not getting too melodramatic?”

“What do you think, girlie?”

Her head was tilted only slightly to look into his eyes. He liked that her heels made her close to his height. Gave an extra kick to the challenge of staying on top. Literally. She contemplated the sexy-spy look he put on for her, but he knew her mind was working, knew she was serious. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to distract her enough to make love again until the President’s visit was over.

“Our Secret Service pals are going to find out we have these phones sooner or later.”

“We’ll only use them for a day. Until Acer gets set up on the island anonymously.”

“Good luck with that. They’ll make it their business to know who every damn last person is that comes onto this island.”

“Sure. But you know Acer isn’t coming on island in one of the conventional ways.”

“How then—for real?”

“He really is coming in underwater. Did you know our man Acer happens to be an expert scuba diver?”

“You don’t say.” She shook her head in mock disbelief. “Crazy.”

She was up to it. She was a warrior. But a sudden unsettled feeling took hold.

“Not too late to back out now.” He held his breath. Had no idea why he said it. Maybe he was crazy.

The startle in her look made his heart ache. He reached out to her and took hold. He spoke before she had a chance to answer. “Hell. It’s way past too late—”

She squirmed and took his face in her hands, glaring eyes understanding and scolding at the same time.

“It’s been too late since the first day we met. Since you pulled that crushed rose from your pocket and put it in the palm of my hand. You had me.”

“The rose? You mean I didn’t need to go to all that trouble of running to Rio to rescue you from a dungeon?”

She smiled and he noted the sparkle of tears in her eyes and wondered how she could be such a damn warrior and so damn sappy at the same time. He loved it. Both sides, the fact that she could handle it all, that she could handle him and not go running for the hills.

“I love your crazy,” she murmured. Nothing stirred his loins more than her husky murmur, her body close and her hands on him. How the hell could he extract himself from this web of desire? How much did he need to maintain his professional edge?

As much as he needed to save the leader of the free world.

With clenched teeth and a hard dick, he put his vibrating hands over hers and pulled them away from his face. He barely avoided bringing them down lower, but she assisted by stepping back from him.

“I even love that iron will of yours,” she said, her voice cooling off.

“Iron something.” He barely said the words aloud.

She’d heard him. The faint catbird smile lifted her face.

“All in due time.”

He turned away and dismissed her words. There was no room to even contemplate the promise. This had to be a case of all or nothing. He used to be good at that.

But that had been before he knew Shana, before they’d become partners, and before they’d declared their undying love and planned marriage. If he’d thought that last part—the commitment of marriage—might put a damper on the romance, he would have been wrong. But of course, he’d never given any of it a thought. Because he’d never thought it possible.

Shana was flat-out a miracle worker.

They reached the Jeep and he drove them back to the beach shack. He wondered how many Secret Service agents were on island by now. He’d spotted their tail down the street from the Gables’ estate. He’d been right to assume they were under constant surveillance and wondered if they were being monitored by the NSA.

As he brought the Jeep to a stop in the beach shack’s crushed-shell drive behind the nondescript sedan, he put a lid on everything except concentrating on getting a grip on this assignment.