one of his eyebrows, the other marking one of his high, pronounced cheekbones. That, combined with the fact that his nose had been broken more than once, gave him a battle-worn look that erased even more of his youth. But except for a few minor slang expressions, Thomas didn’t speak the language of the street. He had no discernible accent of any kind, and Frisco wondered if the kid had worked as hard to delete that particular tie with his past and his parents as he himself had.
“Natasha is the lieutenant’s niece,” Mia explained. “She’s going to stay with him for a few weeks. She just arrived today.”
“From Mars, right?” Thomas looked under the table and made a face at Natasha.
She giggled. “Thomas thinks I’m from Mars ’cause I didn’t know what that water was.” Natasha slithered on her belly out from underneath the table. The sand stuck to her clothes, and Frisco realized that she was wet.
“A little Martian girl is the only kind of girl I can think of who hasn’t seen the ocean before,” Thomas said. “She didn’t even seem to know kids shouldn’t go into the water alone.”
Mia watched myriad emotions cross Alan Francisco’s face. The lifeguard’s flag was out today, signaling a strong undertow and dangerous currents. She saw him look at Thomas and register the fact that the teenager’s jeans were wet up to his knees.
“You went in after her,” he said, his low voice deceptively even.
Thomas was as nonchalant. “I’ve got a five-year-old niece, too.”
Francisco pulled himself painfully up with his cane. He held out his hand to Thomas. “Thanks, man. I’m sorry about before. I’m…new at this kid thing.”
Mia held her breath. She knew Thomas well, and if he’d decided that Alan Francisco was the enemy, he’d never shake his hand.
But Thomas hesitated only briefly before he clasped the older man’s hand.
Again, a flurry of emotions flickered in Francisco’s eyes, and again he tried to hide it all. Relief. Gratitude. Sorrow. Always sorrow and always shame. But it was all gone almost before it was even there. When Alan Francisco tried to hide his emotions, he succeeded, tucking them neatly behind the ever-present anger that simmered inside of him.
He managed to use that anger to hide everything quite nicely—everything except the seven-thousand-degree nuclear-powered sexual attraction he felt for her. That he put on display, complete with neon signs and million-dollar-a-minute advertising.
Good grief, last night when he’d made that crack about wanting her to share his bed, she’d thought he’d been simply trying to scare her off.
She had been dead wrong. The way he’d looked at her just minutes ago had nearly singed her eyebrows off. And the truly stupid thing was that the thought of having a physical relationship with this man didn’t send her running for her apartment and the heavy-duty dead bolt that she’d had installed on her door. She couldn’t figure out why. Lt. Alan Francisco was a real-life version of G.I. Joe, he was probably a male chauvinist, he drank so much that he still looked like hell at noon on a weekday and he carried a seemingly permanent chip on his shoulder. Yet for some bizarre reason, Mia had no trouble imagining herself pulling him by the hand into her bedroom and melting together with him on her bed.
It had nothing to do with his craggy-featured, handsome face and enticingly hard-muscled body. Well, yes, okay, so she wasn’t being completely honest with herself. It had at least a little bit to do with that. It was true—the fact that the man looked as if he should have his own three-month segment in a hunk-of-the-month calendar was not something she’d failed to notice. And notice, and notice and notice.
But try as she might, it was the softness in his eyes when he spoke to Natasha and his crooked, painful attempts to smile at the little girl that she found hard to resist. She was a sucker for kindness, and she suspected that beneath this man’s outer crust of anger and bitterness, and despite his sometimes crude language and rough behavior, there lurked the kindest of souls.
“Here’s the deal about the beach,” Alan Francisco was saying to his niece. “You never come down here without a grown-up, and you never, ever go into the water alone.”
“That’s what Thomas said,” Tasha told him. “He said I might’ve drownded.”
“Thomas is right,” Francisco told her.
“What’s drownded?”
“Drowned,” he corrected her. “You ever try to breathe underwater?”
Tash shook her head no, and her red curls bounced.
“Well, don’t try it. People can’t breathe underwater. Only fish can. And you don’t look like a fish to me.”
The little girl giggled, but persisted. “What’s drownded?”
Mia crossed her arms, wondering if Francisco would try to sidestep the issue again, or if he would take the plunge and discuss the topic of death with Natasha.
“Well,” he said slowly, “if someone goes into the water, and they can’t swim, or they hurt themselves, or the waves are too high, then the water might go over their head. Then they can’t breathe. Normally, when the water goes over your head it’s no big deal. You hold your breath. And then you just swim to the surface and stick your nose and mouth out and take a breath of air. But like I said, maybe this person doesn’t know how to swim, or maybe their leg got a cramp, or the water’s too rough, so they can’t get up to the air. And if there’s no air for them to breathe…well, they’ll die. They’ll drown. People need to breathe air to live.”
Natasha gazed unblinkingly at her uncle, her head tilted slightly to one side. “I don’t know how to swim,” she finally said.
“Then I’ll teach you,” Francisco said unhesitatingly. “Everyone should know how to swim. But even when you do know how to swim, you still don’t swim alone. That way, if you do get hurt, you got a friend who can save you from drowning. Even in the SEALs we didn’t swim alone. We had something called swim buddies—a friend who looked out for you, and you’d look out for him, too. You and me, Tash, for the next few weeks, we’re going to be swim buddies, okay?”
“I’m outta here, Ms. S. I don’t want to be late for work.”
Mia turned to Thomas, glad he’d broken into her reverie. She’d been standing there like an idiot, gazing at Alan Francisco, enthralled by his conversation with his niece. “Be careful,” she told him.
“Always am.”
Natasha crouched down in the sand and began pushing an old Popsicle stick around as if it were a car. Thomas bent over and ruffled her hair. “See you later, Martian girl.” He nodded to Francisco. “Lieutenant.”
The SEAL pulled himself up and off the bench. “Call me Frisco. And thanks again, man.”
Thomas nodded once more and then was gone.
“He works part-time as a security guard at the university,” Mia told Francisco. “That way he can audit college courses in his spare time—spare time that doesn’t exist because he also works a full day as a landscaper’s assistant over in Coronado.”
He was looking at her again, his steel blue
