Chapter 7
SEVEN
Light filtered through unfamiliar windows when Britta woke up.
Not her Georgetown apartment. Not the resort cottage.
She lay on an old sofa, the smells of bacon, eggs, and coffee rousing her.
What? Wait…Hawkeye’s apartment.
She’d fallen asleep with West’s shoulder under her cheek.
She jerked upright. The space beside her was empty. The blanket had been tucked around her. The TV was off.
West stood at the stove, his back to her, in a faded blue T-shirt that did amazing things to his shoulders.
He was scrambling eggs with one hand, flipping bacon with the other.
Domestic. Comfortable.
Her writer brain supplied a scene:
I woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of rain against the window. He was in the kitchen—the mysterious operative who’d saved my life in Prague. Ryder, he’d said his name was. Ryder Kane. I’d fallen asleep on his couch, wrapped in his jacket, trusting him despite every reason not to.
He turned when I entered. Smiled. Not the dangerous operative anymore. A man making breakfast.
“Morning,” he said.
And I realized: I was falling for him.
Britta shook her head. She was not Eva. West was not her fictional hero.
Even if he was currently plating scrambled eggs.
“You’re awake,” West said, turning, glancing at her. “Coffee’s on the counter. Eggs are almost done.”
He might have showered, but he hadn’t shaved, a day’s growth of whiskers shadowing his jaw. It made him look dangerous. Fierce. And for a second, the memory of him saving her last night swept through her.
Fierce, yet safe.
She pried herself off the sofa, although her legs protested—muscles screaming from the swimming, the explosion, the terror. The oversized T-shirt and sweatpants were wrinkled from sleeping. “You cooked.”
“Hawkeye had supplies. Seemed wasteful not to use them.” He put her plate on the counter. “Morning.”
“Morning.”
She sat on a bench. The bacon was crispy. The eggs fluffy and golden.
“Who are you—Chef Ramsay?”
“It’s eggs and bacon. Hardly gourmet.”
Her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since the wings last night.
West came around and sat next to her at the small kitchen counter. The eggs tasted like heaven. The bacon’s salt dissolved on her tongue. The coffee was strong and hot.
“Mmm.” He took a sip of coffee. “We need to talk about today.”
Oh. “Okay.”
“You need to check in. Your father needs to know you’re safe.”
“I know.”
“And I need to check in with my team. Verify that everyone got off the yacht. Get intel on Petrov’s people.”
Britta nodded. Took another bite even though the eggs had lost their flavor.
“But we can’t do that from here,” West continued. “We can’t use my phone. It’s dead, although I did stick it in a bag of rice. Coco might be able to pull information from it. And Hawkeye’s phone didn’t charge. So I need to acquire a phone.”
“Why don’t we just go back to Sunset Key?”
“That would require a ferry ride, and who knows who might be watching, and…my gut says we need more information before we get back on a boat.”
Right.
“There’s an electronics store in a strip mall just up the road.”
“Won’t that be risky? Me going out in public?”
“Not if we disguise you.”
“How?”
West stood. Went to the bedroom. Came back with a baseball cap and sunglasses. “Hair up. Hat on. Baggy clothes. You’ll look like every other tourist in Key West.”
“You think that’ll work?”
“Your face is recognizable. But people see what they expect to see. They expect the president’s daughter to have a security detail and professional styling. They don’t expect her wearing an oversized T-shirt on the back of a scooter.” He handed her the hat. “Trust me.”
Those words again.
She’d trusted him last night. In the water. On the scooter. Breaking into this apartment.
She could trust him with this.
“Okay.”
West helped her pull her hair through the back of a ball cap. Handed her Hawkeye’s sunglasses—aviators that were too big but worked.
He stepped back. Assessed. “That’ll work. You look like a college student on spring break.”
“I’m twenty-six.”
“You look nineteen in that getup. Perfect.”
Britta went to the bathroom mirror. Stared. He was right. The hat and sunglasses and baggy clothes transformed her. Young. Carefree. Anonymous.
Not the president’s daughter at all.
“I’m worried about the wedding,” she said, coming back. “It’s supposed to be today at twilight.”
“My guess is that it’s probably off, given yesterday’s fun.”
Her mouth tightened. Poor Scarlett.
West seemed to read her mind. “Ford and Scarlett have been planning this for six months. They’ll figure something out.” West grabbed Hawkeye’s keys. “Ready?”
No. But she nodded.
The scooter was where they’d left it. West drove. Britta wrapped her arms around his waist. Held on. Tried not to think about how solid he felt. How her hands fit against his washboard stomach.
For a Saturday morning, the strip mall was busy.
Tourists and locals browsed clothes on round racks, a sidewalk sale, a handful of shops selling T-shirts and sunscreen and souvenirs.
A small sea turtle refuge was tucked into one end, and on the other, a phone-repair shop that also sold disposable phones.
Britta’s gaze went to a Sea Turtle Refuge sign pointing toward a building at the end.
“I’ll get the phone,” West said. “Stay close.”
“Can I look at the turtle refuge? For a few minutes?”
West followed her gaze. Something in his expression softened. “Ten minutes. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t take off the hat.”
“I won’t.”
He watched her go. She felt his eyes on her back the entire way.
The sea turtle refuge was small. The walls were lined with tanks holding injured turtles in various stages of recovery. Information placards explained each turtle’s story—boat strike, fishing-line entanglement, cold stunning, plastic ingestion.
A staff member—a young woman with kind eyes—greeted her. “Feel free to look around. We have a release scheduled for Thursday, if you’re still in town. Marley here is finally healed enough to go home.”
She pointed to a large loggerhead turtle swimming lazy circles in the biggest tank.
Britta pressed her hand to the glass. Watched the turtle glide through the water with powerful strokes. Protected. Healed. Going home.
“She’s beautiful.”
“She is. Took six months to rehabilitate. But she’s ready now.”
Six months. Half a year of healing before being strong enough to return to the ocean.
Britta understood that more than she wanted to.
“Britta.”
West’s voice. Low. Close.
She turned. He was watching her with an expression she couldn’t read.
“Did you get the phone?”
“Yeah. You like turtles.”
“They’re survivors. They adapt. They heal.” She looked back at Marley. “And then they find their courage again to venture back out into the sea.”
West was quiet. Then, “Come on. Let’s find a place to sit down. I need to make these calls.”
They found a beachside restaurant with outdoor seating right on the sand. White picnic tables painted in pink and white stripes. Palm trees arching overhead, fronds rattling in the breeze. The kind of place where tourists came in sandy and slightly sunburned and nobody looked twice.
Britta ordered peel-and-eat shrimp. West got a burger and fries.
They took a table under a palm tree, the wood hot from the sun.
Waves rolled in, easy, unhurried, the salty air a mix of grilled fish and coconut sunscreen.
Voices carried—conversations in multiple languages, laughter, the clink of glasses and bottles.
Britta cracked open a shrimp. Pulled out the meat. “I’ve never felt so weirdly free.”
“Free?”
“No security detail. No one watching what I eat or when I eat or how I eat.” She gestured with the shrimp. “I’m wearing borrowed clothes at a random restaurant with no one paying attention to me. It’s the most normal I’ve felt in years.”
West ate a fry. “That’s sad.”
“That’s my life.”
“Was your life. Past tense. You ran away from that.”
“For three days. Then I go back.” She ate the shrimp. Reached for another. “Speaking of which—did you check in?”
He’d told her he’d called it in. “Called Ham. Everyone’s alive. Some minor injuries but nothing serious. Ford’s mad. Scarlett’s out for blood. Your security detail is mobilizing the entire federal government to find you.”
Britta’s pulse spiked. “Oh perfect. My dad?”
“Didn’t ask. But I’m guessing he’s not calm.”
“He’s going to kill me.”
“He’s going to lock you in the White House and never let you leave.”
“Same thing.”
West took a bite of his burger. “Wedding’s moved to Friday. Ford’s cousin has a house a few hours north of Miami—waterfront property, apparently perfect for a small ceremony. Tight security.”
“Can I go?”
“I promised to get you there in one piece.”
She stared at him. The easy way he said that, like No problem, sure. But…what?
“You did what?”
“You still want to go, don’t you?”
“Of course. But…West, the minute the Secret Service finds us—”
“It’s okay, Britta.” He reached out and touched her hand—just a calm-down gesture, but it sent heat right through her body, her breath catching.
He stopped mid-fry and frowned. “You okay?”
“Yes. I mean…thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We still have to survive the Secret Service.” But he smiled.
He knew something she didn’t know. She felt it in her gut.
Britta cracked open another shrimp. Tried to sound casual. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened in that training scenario?”
West set down his burger. Wiped his hands. Took a long drink of his root beer.
She thought he wasn’t going to answer.
Then, “It was a protection-detail simulation. A training scenario designed to test judgment under pressure. I was assigned to protect a ‘dignitary’—a training instructor playing the role. Threat-assessment exercise. Multiple potential threats in a crowded environment.”
“What went wrong?”