Chapter 15
Shana freed herself from Caps strong arms. The embrace had been exactly what she needed—a true homecoming welcome.
But when she turned she found Dane’s eyes on her.
The granite stare. The one that felt like it was coming from the distance of an unreachable mountaintop.
She still felt the warmth of being home.
Safe. Any juice left from the days of adrenaline-induced action faded to nothing.
“Now we wait for a call from David?” She let her smile free.
She was too tired to discipline herself.
“How about if I call for some food—maybe some pie.” She winked at Dane to bridge the gap.
Even his distance couldn’t dispel the bubble of euphoria in her chest, making her feel calm and happy and her mood impossible to hide.
The long trip had relaxed her when it shouldn’t have.
It felt like there was a truce between her and Dane while they flew the endless hours through dark and then light, stopping to refuel and stretch and not much else.
During the flight, she rested her mind as much as she did her body in spite of the cramped quarters and hours spent sitting.
Shoulder to shoulder with Dane, feeling his heat and his solid strength up against her, had calmed her.
It could have gone either way. Some days it would have created an exhausting tension. Most days.
She might as well admit it to herself—it had been his choice, under his control. Dane let her rest, he inspired her rest. This time.
Now he gave her his usual look committing to nothing, admitting nothing.
Then she spotted it—a small twitch and a crinkle under his left eye.
It was an unguarded move. He’d allowed it.
She promised herself not to care. At this moment Dorothy returning from Oz had nothing on her—wicked witch Dane Blaise or not.
She flipped her phone from the back pocket of her jeans.
She needed to change her clothes. She needed to take a long shower.
The image flashed through her mind of Dane’s strong arms, his hard, wet chest. Soap suds sliding over her skin under the sensual pressure of his hands.
Maybe she ought to take a cold shower. She held the smile on her face and concentrated on pressing the number for Sassy Stephens.
She could use one of Sassy’s pies right now.
She could use some of Dane’s loving right now even more.
Sassy’s voice dispelled her runaway thoughts like the jarring landing of a jet on a runway.
“Sassy—”
Dane turned to watch her talk. Shana turned away and listened to the excited girl, waiting for an opening to order pie for five hungry people.
They hadn’t been concerned about eating before they left Brazil.
They’d been concerned with nothing except drinking tequila and getting out undeterred, getting home. Home…
“I bet you’re hungry. What kind of pie do you want?” Sassy asked. After a beat of empty air, she prompted, “Shana? Everything all right?”
“Yes. Glad to be home. How about three pies—” As Shana placed the order, she watched Dane place a call and half listened.
He spoke to Ronnie Ryan, aka the kid, who worked in food delivery for The Shark’s Table when he wasn’t moonlighting for Beachcomber Investigations as an errand boy.
Ronnie saw the job more like a role in a movie than real life and Shana worried about him—almost as much as Dane did.
Dane spoke to him as if they were both still in eighth grade now.
She ended her call and looked down the hall toward her bedroom and the bathroom she shared with Dane—with the shower she longed to share with him.
“You can shower first,” Dane said.
She snapped around and found everyone in the room watching her.
Throwing her hands on her hips, she quelled the rising heat in her chest. “Don’t mind if I do—although you all need it more than I do.
You can use the outside shower. Or the hose.
” She turned and headed for the bathroom, grabbing her small duffel from the floor next to her where she’d dropped it, and listening to the scoffs and chuckles with an inside-her-heart smile.
*****
Dane told himself he was glad Shana was out of sight. The last remnants of the out-of-time ease of their flight had disappeared. The shack was filled with familiar tension, familiar comfort, promise, and trepidation and, not to mention, weapons and ammunition.
“You suppose Ronnie ‘the kid’ Ryan thought to stock the freezer appropriately?” Acer asked.
He walked in the direction of the refrigerator, practically stepping on Dane’s toes in the tight quarters of the kitchen.
Oscar, Cap and Acer were lined up against the wall near the back door, barely inside the house.
“I’m betting he did,” Dane said. “I’ll bring the glasses.
It could be a long wait.” He banged open cabinets and found new glasses stocked inside.
They were made of high-impact plastic and decorated with beachy designs in turquoise and lime.
He sensed Sassy’s influence. Overcoming his design reservations and the kick to his manly sensibilities, he grabbed a handful of the practical, potentially unbreakable glasses and led the group of men into his dining-room-office.
Shoving the laptop and a file box to the far end, he plunked down the fun cups and sat in the furthest chair.
He slipped the special phone, purchased for this occasion, from his pocket and put it on the table.
Acer and Cap took chairs at the table dominating the dining area.
“I apologize for the glassware.”
Oscar plunked the very large bottle of Patron in the middle of the table. “Your man Ronnie aims to please. I’ll put in a good word for him with the department.”
“He thinks he owes me for saving his life,” Dane said. He glanced at his watch.
Oscar opened the bottle. “Let me do the honors.” He poured drinks all around in a manner that suggested he’d had a substantial stint as a barkeep in one iteration of his past identities.
Ronnie Ryan and Sassy Stephens arrived simultaneously, crowding into the kitchen with pie and food.
They stayed and unloaded pie carriers and takeout boxes all over the table.
Dane didn’t want them to stay. Their presence at the shack was agitating at the best of times and caused sweat to trickle at times like this in the midst of a mission.
But David hadn’t called so he figured they had some time before all hell descended on them.
By the time they finished eating, they still hadn’t heard from David and O’Keefe. This no longer represented a comforting reprieve. Dane put the phone back in his pocket. He didn’t want to take any chances if they needed to leave in a hurry.
*****
Shana felt like herself again after showering, dressing and eating.
She felt at home with the crowd around the table—almost like her family’s Sunday dinner back in Sydney.
Conversation was kept light in deference to Sassy and Ronnie’s sensibilities—no matter how much they prompted each one of them for a hair-raising story.
But when Shana rose from the chair and brought her dish to the kitchen, she gazed out the window overlooking the harbor and the thought of home was followed closely by the thought of an impending invasion.
She turned to find Dane right behind her. He liked to stand behind her at the kitchen sink. It was probably the closest they ever came to simulating a domestic scene. But it was usually—like now—more like a sensual flirtation than anything domestic.
“Doing the dishes, girlie?” He whispered the words close to her ear and gave rise to goose bumps along the skin of her neck.
The instinct to lean into him was quickly beaten by the hard-learned move to stiffen.
He clutched a handful of her hair. She stiffened more.
He let his hand drift through the tendrils, creating a whirlwind of sensations and a leapfrog of tenderness in her belly. She clenched her gut ruthlessly.
“I wish we could rest, darlin’, but if David doesn’t call in the next five minutes, I’m going to call him. Assume there’s a glitch.”
His words sounded intimate, unalarming, even though the message was anything but. He had a habit of doing that—calming her while there was every reason to be the opposite of calm. It worked. She felt relaxed as her mind spun out the course of possible events, the action that would be needed.
“Sassy… Ronnie,” she said.
“I know.” He moved closer. She braced herself for one last act of tenderness before the storm of separation and the real-world chaos of events would descend. But the tenderness never happened.
The shrill sound of Dane’s phone blasted between them.
*****
Dane not only hated his phone at that moment, but he could safely say he hated the entire world and all the events and people who conspired against him having one moment, one goddamn moment of sweet reprieve.
A kiss. A simple embrace. A tender flicker.
The kind that other people had every single goddamn day.
He stepped back from Shana without taking his eyes from her emotion-filled green ones. Then he slipped his goddamn phone from his shirt pocket and put it to his ear.
“David.”
“We had them in our sights. We were on their tail or they were on ours. Henrique, Erico, Floyd and a few other men. They got the message, but we lost them after they left our abandoned hotel room. We headed to the airport.” David took a breath. Dane said nothing. He knew something was coming.
“Tell Shana there is no sign of Gabriela—she’ll be glad to hear it.” David paused again and Dane braced himself, putting the phone on speaker now.
David’s next words sounded loud in the otherwise silent space of the kitchen and dining area.