Chapter 2
Shana sat across from the affable Captain Colin Lynch who looked comfortable in his office behind his desk. And wondered how long they’d have to wait. It had been a long trip. From Australia to London to Boston. And then to damn Martha’s Vineyard. All within seventy-two hours.
“I don’t suppose you have a bowl of spaghetti in your top drawer?” She slung her right leg over her left knee and leaned back in her chair while the captain laughed.
“Tell me about Dane Blaise.” She needed to know who her partner really was beyond the sketchy bio she’d been given.
All she’d gotten from the bio was that he was seasoned.
That made her uneasy. The last thing she wanted was some bossy old man not giving her respect, worse, not up to keeping up with her or whoever their opposition was.
“What do you want to know?”
Why should I trust him?
“The usual.”
“More like the unusual. He’s a legend in the business. Except the stories I heard are true.”
“What stories? How do you know they’re true?”
“I know they’re true because the governor told me.”
“So tell me.”
He looked at his watch. She hoped she wasn’t too sleepy to pay attention.
He said, “Okay. This is my favorite. Dane was with a team and they were in a situation in a foreign country—undisclosed location.
They had chased down a guy in a car with a high-value hostage who was unconscious at the time.
They had reason to believe the hostage needed medical attention.
The team trapped the car between them on three sides and a building on the fourth with nowhere to go.
“But the target had a gun on the hostage. It was a standoff. The team leader negotiated with the target while they tried to line up a sniper. Unfortunately, the locals got involved and put the kibosh on the sniper. The standoff went on for a while—some say close to an hour. Until Dane had had enough. He snuck out of the line, away from his team and back around the perimeter behind the car. No one saw him. They were all busy jawing and keeping an eye on each other. He went to the ground and crawled under the car—still no one noticed. They shouted and negotiated until they told the perp they’d cooperate and the local police ordered everyone to drop their weapons.
“That’s when Dane popped up from under the car and stood right in front of the target at the driver door.
He grabbed the perp by the neck and yanked him and his weapon through the car window and out of the vehicle.
” The captain paused and shook his head, staring at some mental picture of the scene in amazement.
Shana wished she hadn’t shuddered. Gooseflesh popped as the story took hold of her imagination.
Captain Lynch turned back to her and she closed her mouth, holding her breath in anticipation of the rest of the story.
She tried her best mental messaging to urge him on, tried not to seem as captivated as she was.
“Then Dane punched the perp once in the face. Popped his nose wide open. I heard it was gushing blood. The guy went down in a heap to the ground. By then Dane’s team stormed the vehicle.
He was lucky no one shot him. Then—this is the legendary part—his team leader yelled at him, ‘What the hell were you doing? You could have got killed. That bleeping crazy move was never in any protocol.’ And Dane said, ‘It’s lunchtime—you were taking too damn long.
I’d have starved by the time you all wrapped this up. ’”
She listened and strained to keep her eyes from widening, to keep a modicum of the cool disdain she’d been working on.
But the telltale quickening in her chest was all about excitement.
Captain Lynch must have heard it or seen it or sensed it.
She licked her lips, stalling for a beat, then said in her best scoffing voice, “That story has to have been embellished.”
Captain Lynch shook his head and gave her a sympathetic you-don’t-fool-me look.
“That’s what I thought. The first time I heard it.
But since then I heard it from the gov and two others from the special ops team who all saw it go down the same way—especially the wise-ass comment at the end.
So now I tend to believe every last word of it is true. That man is one tough son of a bitch.”
“Who was the team leader?” She had a suspicion.
“The gen—governor. We used to refer to him as the general, but only in the field and only amongst ourselves. The name stuck. All of us from his team still use it whenever he calls on us.”
“You served with him too? Did Governor Douglas recruit everyone on this assignment from his special ops team?”
“Yep. We’re all the governor’s men. Except you. In a way though—”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be happy to get back to London and the Yard.”
“We’ll see. Maybe the beachcomber will change your mind.”
“Beachcomber?”
“Dane Blaise.”
“He’s not going to change my mind. Why would he even bother?” She tried to go for rhetorical, but she hadn’t been fooling nice Captain Lynch and in spite of his niceness, she had to give him some of her stingily held respect.
“Trust me. You have his respect.”
“I don’t trust you either.” She snapped. She couldn’t afford blind trust and studied him as she considered this. She could handle him. But Dane Blaise?
The captain’s cell phone sounded and he jumped to answer it.
“Captain Lynch here.”
She watched his face go serious. He had to be telling the truth about Dane, but so far she didn’t get why this mission would warrant a superhero and having her shipped from London to handle it.
Why couldn’t Captain Lynch and his troopers handle it?
Her superiors at the Met wouldn’t have sent her here to waste her time.
She had no doubt. None at all. But there was no shaking her unease and the sense that she was being set up somehow.
He finished listening, said a curt good-bye and hung up. She waited for him to tell her about it. There was something big about this she didn’t know yet. He leaned forward with his elbows on his clutter-free desk and looked at her, his brow furrowed.
“That was Dane. He’s had trouble losing the con so he’s on foot and coming in the back door.”
“Okay.”
Two minutes later, the door to the office opened.
A man who she presumed to be Dane Blaise walked in and pulled up the empty chair next to her.
She smelled the strong scent of tropical sun lotion.
Shana had a sudden wistful longing for home and the beach in Sydney.
Feeling on edge, like the room had gotten too crowded and there wasn’t enough air, she kept her professional demeanor and gave Dane a polite smile and a nod.
He nodded back without smiling. Instead he held out his hand to her and gave her a small pink rose.
“A beach rose. They grow wild near here. Welcome to Martha’s Vineyard.”
Confusion mingled with a small bubble of pleasure which she immediately tamped down.
From his pocket, he pulled out a key. Taking her empty hand in his, he turned it over and dropped the key in her palm
“That’s the key to the Whittier house where you’ll be staying.”
Before she could respond, because her mouth was too damn dry and her chest too tight with tension while he still held her hand.
Feeling like she’d been holding her breath, as if he’d sucked up all the air in the room and somehow had a stranglehold on all the energy, as if he controlled it, Dane dropped her hand and turned away.
A thank you stuck in her throat where her pulse pounded in pent-up excitement.
She had no idea what to make of the rose gesture, of him.
On the heels of hearing his legend and after convincing herself he was an old curmudgeon.
The last thing she’d expected was the raw sensual pull and energy he exuded, like he had his own force field, like a sun with planets.
As she stared at his streaky sun-bleached hair, windblown and longish, her will cemented. There was no way in hell she would be caught in his orbit. He was all sin.
If the Marlboro Man was a beachcomber instead of a cowboy, this guy could be the model.
Then again, maybe she could picture him in a cowboy hat on a horse.
But he was a good ten years past her age limit for eligible men, unprofessional thought or not.
Either way, the moment passed and her temptation to flirt went by as she gathered her wits.
“Peter call yet?” Dane asked Cap.
“No. I’ll call him now.” Captain Lynch picked up the phone and scanned his computer screen for the number until Dane rattled it off for him, then turned his attention to Shana.
She braced herself and felt a flutter of adrenalin.
The strong sense that she needed to defend herself from him gripped her.
Knowing he was a tough guy didn’t diminish the charisma and she wished she wasn’t so damned impressed with him.
Nerves made her double down on her defenses.
How would she ever trust him as her partner?
“I had to lose the tail—not easy to do on the island.”
“How’d you do it?” Captain Lynch asked with the phone still on his ear.
“I parked my car at the grocery store, left by the back door and jogged here. I have the advantage of knowing the island like my own balls.” He winked at her. “What’s your story?” He waited. Not even blinking.
She refused to flinch. She would not respond to his baiting. She would tough him out. She’d done it before with crasser men than him back in Sydney.
“I’m a beach bunny who knows how to shoot straight. What’s your story?”
“You leave the shootin’ to me, bunny.”
“You forgot to tell me your story.” Besides that you’re an insufferable…
“No story. I’ve been around the block. If the world could be called a block. Shot and caught my share of bad guys. I owe the governor, so here I am.”
The captain cleared his throat.
“I’m putting the governor on speaker phone—you ready?”