thanks to this required detour to the island’s remote south coast, he and Lilah had missed their scheduled ride out of the country. So now, in addition to everything else, he was going to have to improvise that part of the rescue plan, too.
But then, he liked to improvise. And he was good at it. Good enough that, so far as he could see, there was now only one problem that might really give him grief.
And she was standing a few feet away.
Hell he’d forgotten just how pretty Lilah was. Damned if she still didn’t look just like the Disney version of Cinderella, all gilt hair and big blue eyes and the sort of skin you usually only saw in body lotion commercials.
Unfortunately—at least as far as he was concerned—unlike a proper G-rated fairy-tale heroine, she was also hot. She’d been hot at eighteen and, if his current itchy-fingered reaction to her was any indication, the subsequent years hadn’t done a thing to dim her fire.
Not that there was anything blatant about it. Or her. Far from it. She had a way about her, all elegant carriage and air of restraint that made a guy think of garden parties and symphony openings, not mud wrestling and strip joints.
And that was a big part of the problem. Call him perverse, but at age twenty it had been her look-but-don’t-touch demeanor that had first attracted him. He’d always loved a challenge—still did—and her sorority girl air of being unattainable had been like a red flag snapped in a bull’s face. All it had taken to hook him had been one look. After that, the only thing he’d been able to think about was sinking his fingers into her pale silky hair, cradling her close and kissing the primness right off that delectable mouth.
Of course, that’d been then and this was now. He was thirty years old. A man, not a boy. And she hadn’t just burned him all those years ago, she’d barbecued him. Which was not an experience he had any intention of repeating.
So how to explain the gut-wrenching, skin-tightening, gotta-have-some-of-that desire that had blasted through him the instant she’d laid her hands on him earlier?
“I just want to be sure I understand,” Lilah said, mercifully interrupting his thoughts.
Well, yeah. That makes two of us, sweetheart. I’d like to understand how I can be standing here thinking of all the different ways I’d like to have wild, swing-from-the-chandeliers sex with you when I haven’t seen you in ten years.
“Gran came to your office and hired you to rescue me?”
“That’s right.”
“And your brother has worked for her in the past. That’s why she went to him and how you came to be here?”
“More or less.”
“And after we…knew…each other you left Denver and joined the Navy?”
“Yeah. Now, if you don’t mind, we don’t have a lot of time before the sun goes down and the guards bring dinner, so let me ask the questions.” He’d think about his backstabbing libido later. Say back in Denver. Over a tall cool one at his favorite tavern. In the year 2025. For now, it was time to get down to business.
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Know what?”
“About dinner.”
He reminded himself to be patient, that it was understandable she’d have questions. “Because I spent yesterday surveilling this place. There’s a big tree about five hundred feet from the compound entrance. It’s tall enough that I could see them ferrying food from the kitchen. Now I need you to tell me whether they come back after dinner to pick up your plate or wait until morning.”
“So far, they’ve always left it until morning.”
“Good. Do you see anybody in between time? Do they do a bed check or come in when the guard changes shifts?”
“No. Why?”
“Because.” He felt for the opening in the seam of his pants just below his hip. “If that’s the case, then once the food comes we essentially become invisible until dawn. And I plan on us being gone from here way before then.”
Disbelief—and a gleam of longing?—flashed in her eyes. Yet she was too well-schooled to expose her emotions longer than that single moment. “Well, yes, that would be nice. But short of dematerializing and squeezing through the bars—” her voice was suddenly cool and uninflected “—I don’t see how you’re going to accomplish that. And even if you could, you’d still have to get the corridor door unbolted and then get past the guards you’re so intent on avoiding. Somehow I don’t see any of that happening.”
He pulled the thigh-length, razor-thin cutting blade free from its hiding place. “Neither do I. That’s why we’re not going out that way.”
“We’re not?” Lilah’s lips parted in astonishment.
And just like that, that prickly wanna-touch sensation washed over him. Because she really did have the most luscious mouth….
“No, we’re not,” he said firmly, forcing himself to concentrate on their surroundings, to triple-check that he hadn’t overlooked anything, even though the layout was already firmly inscribed on his brain. Located on a windswept headland on San Timoteo’s southern tip, the cell block occupied the far end of the walled-off compound that was also home to a commandant’s residence and modest barracks.
The jail itself was the shape of a basic rectangle. At the top of the shorter, western wall was a solid iron door that opened from a guard house into a narrow corridor boasting a single small, skinny window. The corridor, roughly five feet by forty, fronted four small, barred cells that were identical in size and shared a common solid back wall. Their only other notable feature was their utter lack of creature comforts.
Deciding the surroundings were stark enough to depress even his overly active libido, Dom returned his gaze to Lilah.
Who’d taken yet another step back from the bars and was now standing in the sole shaft of sunlight, allowing him to see what he’d missed before due to the deep shadows that draped the room like a heavy blanket.
A smudge of bruises circled her right wrist, a larger contusion ran from shoulder to elbow on her opposite arm, and a fading but still telltale smear of yellow-tinged purple marred one side of her jaw.
The sight made him go cold. Suddenly wishing he could turn back time and have a real go at the sons-of-bitches guards instead of pulling his punches the way he had when he’d let them overpower him, he struggled to contain his anger and keep it out of his voice. “Lilah.”
His voice may have sounded normal, but clearly something—the rigidness of his stance, the muscle that had twitched to life in his jaw—must have tipped her off to his sudden tension because she went very still. “What?
“Did they hurt you?” he asked softly.
“Hurt me?” Despite her cautious response, the fingers of her right hand reflexively touched her battered wrist, revealing she knew what had prompted the question.
“Were you raped?”
Abruptly, her expression cleared. “No.” She shook her head. “No. I’m not positive,
