his eyes. “I’m not what you expected?”
She couldn’t deny it. She’d expected the lieutenant to arrive wearing a dress uniform, stiff and starched and perfectly military—and smelling a little more human and a little less like a real-life marine mammal-type seal. Wordlessly, she shook her head no.
Joe gazed silently at the girl. She watched him, too, her eyes so wide and blue against the porcelain paleness of her skin. It was hard for him to tell the color of her hair—it was wet. It clung, damp and dark, to the sides of her head and neck.
Red, he guessed. It was probably some shade of red, maybe even strawberry blond, probably curly. Yet, if there really was a God and He was truly righteous, she would have nondescript straight hair, maybe the color of mud. It didn’t seem fair that this girl should have wealth, a powerful job, refined manners, a pair of beautiful blue eyes and curly red hair.
Without makeup, her face looked alarmingly young. Her features were delicate, almost fragile. She wasn’t particularly pretty, at least not in the conventional sense. But her cheekbones were high, showcasing enormous crystal blue eyes. And her lips were exquisitely shaped, her nose small and elegant.
No, she wasn’t pretty. But she was incredibly attractive in a way he couldn’t even begin to explain.
The robe she wore was too big for her. It drew attention to her slight frame, accentuating her slender wrists and ankles.
She looked like a kid playing dress up in her mommy’s clothes.
Funny, from the cut and style of the business suits that had been neatly packed in her suitcase, Joe had expected this Veronica St. John—or “Sinjin,” as she’d pronounced it with her slightly British, extremely monied upper-class accent—to be, well…less young. He’d expected someone in their mid-forties at least, maybe even older. But this girl couldn’t be a day over twenty-five. Hell, standing here like this, just out of the shower, still dripping wet, she barely looked sixteen.
“You aren’t what I expected, either,” Joe said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “So I guess that makes us even.”
He knew he was making her nervous, sitting there like that. He knew she was nervous about him getting the bedspread dirty, nervous about him leaving behind the lingering odor of dead fish—bait from the smelly bucket Blue had knocked over earlier that morning. Hell, he was nervous about it himself.
And damn, but that made him angry. This girl was somehow responsible for dragging him away from his shore leave. She was somehow responsible for the way he’d been rushed across the country without a shower or a change of clothes. Hell, it was probably her fault that he was in this five-star hotel wearing his barnacle-scraping clothes, feeling way out of his league.
He didn’t like feeling this way. He didn’t like the barely concealed distaste he could see in this rich girl’s eyes. He didn’t like being reminded that he didn’t fit into this opulent world of hers—a world filled with money, power and class.
Not that he wanted to fit in. Hell, he wouldn’t last more than a few months in a place like this. He preferred his own world—the world of the Navy SEALs, where a man wasn’t judged by the size of his wallet, or the price of his education, or the cut of his clothes. In his world, a man was judged by his actions, by his perseverance, by his loyalty and stamina. In his world, a man who’d made it into the SEALs was treated with honor and respect—regardless of the way he looked. Or smelled.
He leaned back on the big, fancy, five-star bed, propping himself up on his elbows. “Maybe you could give me some kind of clue as to what I’m doing here, honey,” he said, watching her wince at his term of endearment. “I’m pretty damn curious.”
The rich girl’s eyes widened, and she actually forgot to look disdainful for a few minutes. “Are you trying to tell me that no one’s told you anything?”
Joe sat up. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
She shook her head. Her hair was starting to dry, and it was definitely curly. “But that’s impossible.”
“Impossible it ain’t, sweetheart,” he said. A double wince this time. One for the bad grammar, the other for the “sweetheart.” “I’m here in D.C. without the rest of my team, and I don’t know why.”
Veronica turned abruptly and went into the hotel suite’s living room. Joe followed more slowly, leaning against the frame of the door and watching as she sifted through her briefcase.
“You were supposed to be met by—” she pulled a yellow legal pad from her notebook and flipped to a page in the back “—an Admiral Forrest?” She looked up at him almost hopefully.
The navy lieutenant just shrugged, still watching her. Lord, but he was handsome. Despite the layers of dirt and his dark, scowling expression, he was, like Prince Tedric, almost impossibly good-looking. And this man was nearly dripping with an unconscious virility that Tedric didn’t even begin to possess. He was extremely attractive underneath all that grime—if she were the type who went for that untamed, rough-hewn kind of man.
Which, of course, Veronica wasn’t. Dangerous, bad-boy types had never made her heart beat faster. And if her heart seemed to be pounding now, why, that was surely from the scare he’d given her earlier.
No, she was not the type to be attracted by steel-hard biceps and broad shoulders, a rough-looking five o’clock shadow, a tropical tan, a molten-lava smile, and incredible brown bedroom eyes. No. Definitely, positively not.
And if she gave him a second glance, it was only to verify the fact that Lieutenant Joseph P. Catalanotto was not going to be mistaken for visiting European royalty.
Not today, anyway.
And not tomorrow. But, for Wila’s sake, for her own career, and for little Cindy at Saint Mary’s, Veronica was going to see to it that two days from now, Joe would be a prince.
But first things first. And first things definitely included putting her clothes back on, particularly since Lieutenant Catalanotto wasn’t attempting to hide the very, very male appreciation in his eyes as he looked at her.
“Why don’t you help yourself to something to drink,” Veronica said, and Joe’s gaze flickered across the suite, toward the elaborate bar that was set up on the other side of the room. “Give me a minute to get dressed,” she added. “Then I’ll try to explain why you’re here.”
He nodded.
She walked past him, aware that he was still watching right up to the moment she closed the bedroom door behind her.
The man’s accent was atrocious. It screamed New York City—blue-collar New York City. But okay. With a little ingenuity, with the right scheduling and planning, Joe wouldn’t have to utter a single word.
His posture, though, was an entirely different story. Tedric stood ramrod straight. Lieutenant Catalanotto, on the other hand, slouched continuously. And he walked with a kind of relaxed swagger that was utterly un-princely. How on earth was she going to teach him to stand and sit up straight, let alone walk in that peculiar, stiff, princely gait that Tedric had perfected?
Veronica pulled fresh underwear and another pair of panty hose—number three for the day—from her suitcase. Her dark blue suit was near the top of the case, so she pulled it on, then slipped her tired feet into a matching pair of pumps. A little bit of
