Chapter 4 #2
“You didn’t answer my invitation.”
“I don’t know you well enough, Mr. Dane. My daddy warned me about strange men like you.” It was cliché, but apt. If he thought it strange that they were putting on this performance for an audience of one boutique clerk, he didn’t let on and he didn’t slip from his role.
“Then accompany me for coffee at Cafe Moxie a couple of doors down and we’ll get to know each other.” He held out a hand.
Shana glanced at Emma as if to implore her advice and the woman obligingly nodded her head with a reassuring smile.
“I’ll make my purchase while you finish in the dressing room,” he said as if it were decided. She wished she could turn him down flat as if this were a real come-on. He needed to be brought down a peg.
And she needed to get a grip. She sauntered back to the dressing room in character while she wondered what happened to the cool calm professional she’d been back in Sydney.
That woman had been lost somewhere between London and Vineyard Haven.
Too much, too quick, on too little sleep.
She changed into cream-colored woven silk pants with a matching low scoop neck top—one of her purchases—and took the rest of her purchases with her.
She needed to get the real Shana back—fast. A good strong cup of coffee would help. Wishing the coffee might come with a shot of whiskey, she walked back toward the front of the shop as if she were walking the plank.
* * *
Dane waited only two minutes, tops, until Shana emerged from the boutique with two bags. Emma waved at them from behind her shop window. The clerk had never been nosier behind her smiling eyes. Perfect.
Shana’s quickness impressed and surprised him. She was more efficient than petulant, a point in her favor. A grudging point.
He held out his arm and said from behind his smile, “Play nice. We’re being watched.
” Then in a louder voice he said, “Please let me store your purchases in my car while we have coffee.” He pointed to the elegant Jaguar convertible at the curb outside Cafe Moxie next door and enjoyed watching her try to keep her dismay from showing.
“We’ll put the bags in the trunk.” He took them from her and tossed them inside the empty space.
The only things he kept in his car were hidden under the carpeting in a locked compartment—a cache of assorted weapons for the occasional assorted assignments.
He doubted he’d need any today. But tomorrow was another day.
They walked inside and took a table in the center of the small coffee shop.
He pulled out her chair and she sat, still silent.
He liked that, but it wasn’t necessarily good for their act.
He leaned close to her while he stood behind her and whispered, “Time for the main show—loosen up and flirt if you’re able. ”
He took his seat facing sideways from the entry as she laughed. It sounded genuine. He leaned back in his chair to see what she had. She gave him a look that said she was game. He took a deep bracing breath then.
Shana rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward, flirting with him with her hooded cat-green eyes and a show of glistening cleavage. Did she slather oil on her damn breasts?
“Where did you get the damn car? A Jaguar? Overnight? Last night you were driving a rusting heap.” She smiled.
“I always keep a spare for traveling off island. In storage at a friend’s home.” He gave her an assessing look and hoped they could get past the chip that seemed cemented to her shoulder. “Got some new intel. Our man Jean Luc is definitely involved in more ways than one.”
“Go on.”
He glanced around, moving his head only a fraction and keeping a smile in place. “He’s the director of the American Invitational Surfing Competition.”
“Shit.” She looked surprised.
“Keep your head in the game, girlie, and paste that fake smile back on your face. We’re flirting. As for Jean Luc, we play dumb.” He gave her a wicked grin, but she didn’t say the words he knew ran through her mind.
Her fake smile turned real and she slid into her role. He admired that she didn’t rise to his bait. It was fun baiting her all the same. A challenge.
“How is it that I never heard of you before, Dane? We’ve traveled in the same social circles.”
She circled one ruby-tipped index finger close to his face so that he wanted to take it with his teeth and suck it into his mouth until she gasped. He remained silent, though his blood hummed with anticipation. Damn the girl.
She continued, “Or if not the same circles, closely related circles.”
He knew she was not talking only to his cover persona, but to him.
The jump deep in his chest surprised him.
She was clever. And it was obvious she was piqued by him and—the only ‘circle’ they had in common—his law enforcement background.
He’d bet his Swiss bank account that vicious nice-guy Captain Lynch told her stories about him.
“Oh, but I think you have heard about me. You may not have realized it was me at the time” He broke off there when a glance into the shop’s mirror—their sole concession to security—revealed their man entering the door. Damn girl had to take the seat facing the door.
A flicker of her eyes told him she spotted the man and she laughed in that peculiar come-hither throaty earthy way she had that hit a nerve in him.
He wished he could temporarily paralyze that nerve because it made his job damned uncomfortable.
He felt the tightening and tilting in his loins and the heat of pleasure begin to surge mixed with anger and not a small amount of fear.
From behind them, their man said, “I see you found the island’s treasure—best coffee this side of the water.”
Her smile was just right—interested yet wary. He wondered how real that was.
“It is good. Do I know you, sir? You look familiar…” Shana gave the man a pouty puzzled look that increased Dane’s discomfort all the more.
“No, I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure, but I see you’ve met my friend here, Dane Blaise.” He pointed to Dane and then put a hand out to Shana. “I’m Jean Luc Ruse.” She lifted her hand and barely touched his.
“Oh, then you both travel in the same social circles? And I was just saying to Dane it’s funny we never met before.”
“It’s a big world out there. I have to admit I myself don’t usually get to Martha’s Vineyard.” Jean Luc crinkled the lines around his eyes in a smile. “I’m more a South of France traveler. But Dane stays around these parts all the time. It is funny that you two never met before.”
She didn’t bat an eyelash at his familiarity with Dane’s background and he certainly didn’t since they’d left it out there in plain sight for him to find—with some embellishments and changes to his real background of course.
But his regularity on the island couldn’t be duplicated or faked and that gave him the ace in credibility.
“Sit down, Jean Luc, since it’s clear you’re not going away,” Dane said.
Jean Luc laughed and Shana gave Dane a tut-tut.
“That’s no way to talk to an old friend,” Shana said. Jean Luc pulled a chair close to Shana.
“You mean old rival,” Dane said. He watched the French man lounge into his seat and lean into Shana. He smiled at Shana and then flicked a glance at Dane.
“You’re right. And we well may be current rivals as well.”
They ordered and were served their coffee while Shana laughed her excruciating laugh at Ruse’s inanities.
As far as Dane could tell, the man was either unaffected or had superior self-control.
Neither of those possibilities was good.
They both spelled consummate professional and confirmed his reputation and danger level.
Maybe it also said something about Dane’s professionalism—or sudden lack thereof. When Jean Luc picked up his steaming cup of black coffee and turned to him, he should have seen it coming. But he hadn’t.
The man coughed and poured half the cup of the scalding liquid in Dane’s lap.
“Damn.” Dane jumped from his chair and clenched his fists, tamping down on the urge to pound the man and realizing quickly as he fought the stars in his vision and the burning sensation in his crotch—not the good kind—the extremely painful kind—to think ahead about playing this out.
Shana looked startled and pushed back from the table, about to rise with too much concern on her face.
“Jesus—”
“I’m so sorry, Dane.” Jean Luc looked concerned too. For real. Maybe he sensed that Dane wanted to hurt him real bad right now. The man called the waitress for ice and she came rushing over.
“I’ll be fine. Excuse me. I’ll take care of this in the men’s room.
” He took the pitcher of ice water from the waitress’s hand and walked to the back of the shop in the most normal gait he could manage, the immediate sting subsiding.
He hoped there was no damage or Jean Luc Ruse’s days were limited.
* * *
The compulsion to pop Jean Luc in his too-pretty jaw grabbed hold of her instincts and squeezed so that she couldn’t speak—didn’t dare speak.
Shana gripped the table and tried not to sound wild with anger.
She wasn’t sure if her anger was with Jean Luc Ruse or with herself for the strangely strong reaction to Dane’s pain and the prospect of damage to his goods.
She felt like something had been sucked from her depths as she contemplated the scalding stain on Dane’s deeply and mysteriously compelling crotch.
Jean Luc had no such problem speaking. He droned on nonstop about how sorry he was and how he hoped his friend would forgive him and he hoped she would forgive him. She wanted to scream. So she did scream.
“Stop.” She sat back down in her chair from which she had jumped. The chair held up under the force of her ire.
“I didn’t realize you were this serious—this taken with our Dane. I … I thought you had just met.”
“Why would you think that?”
“My mistake.” He darted a worried look in the direction of the men’s room and then sat down with the grace of a ballet dancer.