exactly what Cal expected to find when he got on the plane that morning. Neither was the non-welcome from a female with questionable emotional stability.
Cal toyed with the idea of launching the still-awake parts of his body at his perfumed attacker. Without seeing her, he guessed he outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. That made the chance of knocking her down pretty damn good.
But the gun posed a problem. A big one. If the lady with the deadly weapon and deep voice was a novice, he might leave Kauai in a zipper bag. An amateur would shoot first. Probably fire straight into his forehead. On the other hand, a skilled markswoman definitely would hit him in the forehead. Fifty-fifty and both options ended with his death. Not the best odds.
Then there was the problem with the tremor moving through her voice. Now that he was listening for it he didn’t hear anything else. She was afraid. Probably smart under the circumstances. Still, there was another emotion mixed in with the fear. He was just clueless enough about the inner workings of the female mind to not be able to define it.
He inhaled, drawing in the strong floral scent on the warm Hawaii night air. “I’m here to see Dan Rutledge.”
“Wh-what?”
The stumble in her voice was more obvious that time. It gave her away. Stern words wrapped around a mushy inside.
Now Cal was getting somewhere in analyzing his opponent. He decided to test her. “What part of the comment didn’t you understand?”
“How do you know Dan?”
The woman’s tone softened. Cal guessed she was one in a long line of his friend’s spirited bedroom conquests. Being a commercial pilot in an island paradise apparently had not cut into Dan’s ability to score with the ladies.
Cal just hoped this woman didn’t fall into the ex-girlfriend-of-Dan category. Calming scorned women was not one of Cal’s skills. Especially another guy’s scorned women. He had enough trouble keeping his own sex life straight without taking on someone else’s.
“Look, can I step down or not? I’m losing feeling in my legs and my neck is getting stiff.” Not to mention the spasm in his back and the fact his defenseless position made him wary.
She—whoever she was—treated him to a sigh. “Fine. Go ahead and stand up.”
“You’re too kind,” Cal said in his most sarcastic tone.
“I can still change my mind, you know.”
“Well, I do now.”
Thanks to years of military training, his body functioned at high level. He could outrun and outshoot men much younger. But the combination of the long plane ride from Florida, the break-in and trying to decipher both Dan’s cryptic message, and the odd reaction to his name by everyone on the island took a toll. Cal feared the worst and so far he had not been wrong in his low expectations.
“My initial threat still stands,” she said in what Cal took to be her shoot-first-say-hello-later hint.
“Understood.”
He unfolded his cramped legs and stretched, working out the kinks in his muscles one at a time. Feet hitting hard floor had never felt so good.
When his nerve endings started firing again, he glanced over at his gun-toting greeter. Now that she backed up, a halo of yellow from the weak night light in the kitchen cast her in shadows in the dark room.
Cal blinked, straining to see the owner of that raspy voice but could not make out her face. Did see the glint from the barrel of the gun, however. That was enough to keep him from moving closer.
“Put your hands on your head.” She did not so much ask as she ordered.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Just do it.”
Seemed she was serious. “What if I like my hands right where they are?”
“I have the gun, so I decide.”
He wondered what she’d say when she realized he possessed a weapon or two. Hell, she wasn’t the only one in the room who knew how to wave a gun around and make threats.
“Why don’t we turn on the light so we can see each other?” He shifted until he felt the secure press of his gun against his lower back.
The silhouetted woman reached to her left. Cal heard a scratch as she grazed the wall for the switch. After a click, a soft white glow poured through the small room and over the furniture.
Not just any furniture. Broken furniture. Torn over-stuffed chairs with ripped fabric. Crushed glass and documents littered the floor. Someone had tossed the place.
He mentally inventoried the damage before settling his gaze on her. When he did, his blood froze. Hiding a face like hers in shadows should be a sin. Long blondish-brown hair and amber eyes.
And the way her snug white T-shirt pulled across her chest highlighted her high, round breasts. Hell, if she were more blond she’d be a living, breathing Barbie doll. Also made him think the doll’s measurements were not quite as unrealistic as his sister insisted.
He tried not to gawk as he visually toured her lean legs from the bottom of her cut-off blue jeans shorts down to her painted pink toenails.
Tried and failed.
“Is there a problem?” she asked as she buried the shaky voice under the growl of a drunken sailor.
“About a dozen of them,” he mumbled.
Her eyes narrowed until only slits of gold were visible. “Who are you?”
Under those impressive looks she carried a gun. Since he did not know if she intended to use it, he fell back on his plan of appeasement. “Tell me what happened in here.”
“I guess you weren’t the only person who tried to break in here tonight.” Her gaze moved from his chest to his shoulders. “Wearing black from head to toe. Subtle, by the way.”
He glanced down to his dark sneakers. Maybe the monotone outfit amounted to overkill. He chalked it up to another choice that made sense at one point but now seemed a bit over-the-top.
“Despite how it looks, I’m not here to burglarize the house,” he said even though he knew it sounded lame.
“You just really like black?”
The time had come to shift attention away from his wardrobe choices. He moved around discarded pens and miscellaneous papers with the tip of his shoe.
Her frown slipped, showing the much more vulnerable face of the woman behind that, at times, unsure voice. “Tell me who you are.”
“We’re not going to play the game this way.”
“Oh?” She waved her weapon from side to side as if to emphasize her point. All that did was convince him of her novice status.
That shot to the forehead looked more and more inevitable.
“We’re
