Heart Strike (9 page)

“We could go to Disney World.”

“The Magic Kingdom.” Melissa laughed, at first in surprise, but then in relief. So he'd guessed right for a change.

“A princess makeover for you,” he said, imagining her in a form-hugging Elsa gown, her hair as light as
Frozen
's heroine, which was even now back in her typical French braid, sounded like an exceptional idea.

Then he grimaced.

“Why do the Disney princes always end up in tights?”

“Oh, trust me, Richie,” Melissa said in her low The Cat tone. “There are many, many reasons. Maybe we'd be better off at Space Mountain.”

“Or we could hit Harry Potter at Universal.”

“Get a butterbeer at the Leaky Cauldron.”

“Buy wands together. Whose would you get?”

“McGonagall's, of course.”

Richie would have bet on Hermione's. “Why?”

“Maggie Smith totally rocks. Transformations. Changing into someone other than myself.”

He turned to look at her as the sound of sudden pain tightened her voice to husky, like it hurt to speak. The predawn light was coming through the forward windscreen and lighting her face with a soft glow. She stared studiously out the window, watching the first of the morning Coast Guard patrol planes do its run-up, taxi into position, and finally take off on the nearest runway—yet another good reason not to run drugs during daylight hours. The roar of its four big engines was muffled by the Twin Otter's fuselage.

“Bet you'd go for Dumbledore's wand,” she said without turning.

“It's too much. I may be Delta, but that would be like bragging about it.” That earned him the smile he'd been hoping for. “As a kid, I always liked Neville.”

“The nerd, of course.”

“Hey, he kills Nagini the snake with a sword. That's my kind of nerd. Why do you want to be different? You look pretty damn spectacular to me.”

She didn't answer, and suddenly Harry Potter didn't seem like the answer either.

He considered pushing her on the personal transformation thing, but he barely knew her, no matter how much it felt as if he did.

“I heard there's some good blue hole diving in Florida.” She planted the subject change solidly between them, telling Richie he'd definitely been right about not pushing at the moment.

He considered her suggestion.

Being Delta, they were both trained as Combat Swimmers. Not the full two-month SEAL Combat Diver course, but water was the big thing for those Sea, Air, and Land types. Still, a Unit operator was a better diver than almost any sport diver.

A dive sounded good.

And he'd never gone down into the underwater limestone caves of a blue hole. Actually, he'd never even seen the darker blue patches in the ocean except in photographs.

But he remembered from a
National Geographic
article that the best blue hole diving…

He began the engine-restart procedure on the Twin Otter. With the long-range tank some long-ago drug runner had installed, they had plenty of fuel.

“What?” Melissa looked at him in surprise.

“Blue hole diving sounds like a great idea.”

“And we're going to fly there?”

“Sure.” He set the throttle to idle and the props to forward. Fuel boost pumps on. Engine start switch, battery voltage only fell to eighteen volts which was a good sign. The engine began ticking over.

“You're stealing this plane?”

“We are. Besides, the plane was probably stolen by the drug runners before it was ‘stolen' by the U.S. Coast Guard. We're just the next in a long line.” Light-off and the engine temperature gauge began climbing.

“We're stealing this plane,” she made it a statement.

“Uh-huh.” He definitely liked the
we
part of that. The generator light popped on and he released the start switch.

“In a multi-engine aircraft without an instructor.”

“We're Delta.” Which meant they could do whatever was needed, and often whatever they wanted.

“Cool! Where are we going?”

“It's a surprise.”

“And the nerd disappears again.”

Richie thought about that as he turned on radios and nav gear. It wasn't about control. Melissa made him want to surprise her; do something special for her at every chance.

Why would someone so perfect feel they needed to change? Maybe they should have gone to Disney World for that transformation into the
Frozen
princess. Melissa as the ice princess came to him so clearly. What would it take to melt her frozen heart? He didn't even know if Melissa's was frozen, but…

He was clearly losing his mind, thinking in circles again. The external geek might go away, but the internal one never shut down. Except for four point nine seconds in a cheap elevator when his brain had imploded and Melissa's kiss had completely overwhelmed him.

Once he had the plane ready, he talked to the tower as if this was a perfectly normal flight. Once cleared, he taxied to the runway and took off into the sunrise. He aimed them due east across the Florida panhandle. It was such a pleasure to fly in daylight that he might have once again been over the gently rolling hills that surrounded Duchess County Airport, New York, rather than the cluttered flatlands of Tampa, Florida.

“I thought we'd get in some of that low-level water flying practice The Priest was talking about.”

She looked down at the land passing beneath them.

And he knew in that instant he'd given her too much of a clue. It didn't really matter, because he'd have to call in an international flight plan shortly or he'd attract some very bad attention from the Coast Guard themselves.

He'd give her five seconds to figure it out. They'd done all of their over-water practice on the Gulf of Mexico. The nearest water on their present heading was the Atlantic Ocean a hundred and thirty miles away.

It didn't take her five seconds; it took her less than three.

She let out a totally girlie squeal of delight that ricocheted painfully within his headset, his ears caught in the crossfire.

“You're taking me to the Bahamas to go diving!”

“Only the best for my Elsa.”

“Elsa?” Then her tone shifted in a flash from ecstatic to…flash chilled. “Like in
Frozen
? What the hell? I kiss you like that and you call me the Ice Queen? Well, you can just forget about it, buddy. Turn this goddamn plane around.”

“Whoa there! I'm not calling you the Ice Queen.” Richie really hadn't meant to say “Elsa” out loud. But it was clear that he'd struck a serious nerve. He'd never heard her swear before.

“Then you'd better explain pretty damn fast before I clobber you and fly myself back. And if your body just happens to fall from a great height into the Everglades and gets eaten by a crocodile or alligator or whatever they have there, I'll declare no knowledge.”

“They actually have both. The Everglades is one of the few regions where the two species coexist. And they aren't just different species. They're also different genus and family. You have to go all the way up to the order Crocodilia to find their common ancestry which is probably an archosaur. That's like going back up to Primates for chimps, lemurs, and humans to—”

“Goddamn it, Richie! Stop changing the topic.”

“I wasn't. You said…”

The Cat didn't hiss over the headset. It was more of a grizzly bear snarl; an animal which only shared kingdom and phylum—Animalia and Chordata—with crocs and gators. Though he decided against pointing that out.

He shrugged but continued flying east. “I haven't been able to get the image out of my head since I thought it up.”

“Melissa the Ice Queen?”

“No, how could you even think that about yourself? But I can't stop picturing you in Elsa's clingy blue-green gown with sparkles all over. She was merely hot. You'd look amazing. Maybe Ilsa would be better. Ingrid Bergman in
Casablanca.
The hair is wrong, but you've got to grant she's one of the great film beauties of all time and that role was the ultimate. That totally works on you, especially as we're headed into such foreign lands. Oh, hey, and Bogey's character is Rick Blaine. Rick—Richie. Get it?”

Melissa went silent. He risked a glance, and he would judge her expression as merely puzzled.

“What is it?”

“A lot of guys call me the Ice Queen—the light hair and skin.” Then her voice turned softer and bitter. “That and because I won't screw every guy who thinks he deserves it.”

“Ice? You?” He had to laugh. “Only if they're completely blind. So I won't use Elsa again.
Ilsa
, you sizzle! And in a dress like Elsa's with your hair down?… Whoo! Just the idea of it. Whoo!” He didn't know what else to say.

After a silence that spanned dozens of miles over the heart of the Florida panhandle, she leaned over and pulled aside the earpiece of his headset.

He braced himself for an ear-splitting shout.

Instead she spoke in a breathy whisper that tickled his ear.

“I'd look great out of it too.”

His training kept the big plane on an even flight, but he had no training concerning what to do when his mind rammed full speed into such heavy turbulence.

Three hours later, the plane was floating alongside a small resort's dock on Cat Island because Richie had said he just couldn't resist. And Melissa hadn't been about to argue. She was certainly as pleased as a cat.

They were sitting down to split a sausage-and-pepper omelet and an order of Bahamian cinnamon French toast. It wasn't all that different from the breakfast she'd had a dozen hours earlier next to the Clearwater hotel pool, but it tasted about a thousand times better.

The setting was part of it. To the north lay the pale blue of submerged reef and the long reach of palm-covered Cat Island. Just on the other side of the pencil-thin island was the great drop-off to the distant limits of the true ocean floor—six thousand feet of water that didn't get shallow again until it hit Africa.

Out to the west and north, a few more islands dotted the horizon, so low they were mere suggestions of palm-dark shading. Only directly behind them lay the thick palms that passed for a forest on Cat Island. Small huts and a lodge were nestled in among the bare trunks.

The occasional gull soared overhead. Smaller birds prowled the trees and the surf splashed onto the bright sand a few dozen steps from their table.

She'd obviously died and gone to heaven.

The more immediate local scenery was also incredible. The instant they'd come ashore, they'd raided the resort's small store. All they'd brought with them were the standard: money and passport. The military ID that no soldier was ever without was in her secure locker back at Fort Bragg. It wasn't the sort of thing you carried as a Delta Force operator.

Richie had bought shorts and once again shed his T-shirt; wearing nothing but dark red shorts, sunglasses, and a bright gloss of sunscreen. He had looked good at the poolside beneath the Clearwater runway's flight path. Wearing the same on the edge of a white sand beach with the Atlantic morning breeze riffling through his light brown hair, he looked incredible.

The other female patrons were eyeing him, some surreptitiously, others flat blatant.

Too bad, ladies. This one is taken.

And he was.

By her.

Which was even stranger.

“Did you set out to confuse me?” The question was out before she thought about it.

“Depends. How am I doing?”

“Far too well.”

“Good thing or bad?”

Richie, always measuring. She ate some of the cinnamon toast off his plate even though there was a slice of it on hers. “Not sure, but good, I think.”

“Cool!” And there was her mild-mannered nerd again.

She wasn't sure which unnerved her more, Q or the soldier. Or was it the unconsciously potent combo of the two?

“Now I have to think of what to do next?” he asked.

“You're on a streak. I don't want to break it.” Besides, her own thoughts at the moment were very one track. “Anything specific in mind?”

“Taking the plane out to some remote, uninhabited island and making love to you for the rest of the day and right into the night.”

And completely taking her breath away in the process. One of them had finally said what they'd both been thinking. Now that it had been said, it didn't get more manageable but rather the exact opposite.

“It's an idea anyway,” he hedged.

“And we aren't doing it because…?” Melissa certainly couldn't answer that question for herself.

“Calories for one thing,” he indicated the sumptuous breakfast laid out before them. “Another—”

“You've got a list, don't you?”

“Do I?” He did that inward-focus thing whenever some fact surprised him.

“Always.”

“Oh.” He looked a little worried. “Is it annoying?”

“Not particularly, just very you.”

“Oh, okay. Let me know if it tips over to the dark side.”

Darth Richie. “Deal.” She could get to like this. Most men lived by their gonads; Richie lived by his brains. But a slightly evil version of him was a very enticing image.

He focused on his breakfast.

“What's the rest of your excuses as to why we aren't racing to the nearest uninhabited island? How much longer
is
your list?”

“Only two items.” He studied his plate carefully.

“Okay. Give. But they better be good ones.”

“I promised you diving. And I think we really should go. Not just because imagining you swimming along a coral reef is even better than witnessing you flying an airplane.”

“You just want to see me in a bikini.”

“You have a bikini?” That got his attention away from his plate.

“Uh-huh. Bought it in the resort's gift shop. Wearing it right now.”

His eyes tracked down to her T-shirt and shorts, but he managed to recover pretty quickly. Then he followed it up with a big grin. “Okay, a dive is now a very, very high priority for me.”

“What's the other reason?” Melissa couldn't remember another time she'd so enjoyed teasing a man. “Better be a good one; that private island sounds awfully good.”

She didn't get the blush from him this time.

Instead, he slipped off his glasses and leaned forward until she could see the hint of green hidden in his blue eyes. He suddenly felt dangerous, unpredictable.

Techies nicknamed Q had simple blue eyes and tousled hair.

Delta warriors had hints of green in their eyes, and the winds that had started in the great deserts of Africa toyed with his hair. He also projected a personal power that set off every single one of her body's proximity alerts.

“It's a good reason.” His voice was deep and smooth with all of the soldier's confidence and none of the genius-boy's caution.

She swallowed and tried to ask, but no sound escaped her throat. Beneath his close scrutiny, all she managed was a tight nod for him to continue.

“The first time I make love to you, I want it to be in a bed. I also want it to be somewhere I won't be interrupted by surprise visitors, weather changes, or anything else. I want a long stretch of hours that are only ours.”

And now she knew exactly why she was already staking her claim on this man.

Then he leaned back and slid his sunglasses back on. “That's why I really think we should go diving first.”

“Huh?” It came out as little more than a gasp. She'd missed something.

“Because once I start making love to you, I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.”

Oh. No, she hadn't missed a thing.

* * *

It wasn't a blue hole, but the reef around Cat Island was plenty amazing. Especially to a guy who'd gotten certified in hard surf and cold, muddy waters with crappy visibility by a bunch of Special Operations trainers intent on drown-proofing their victims.

Unlike during his Combat Swimmer training, this water was aquamarine—the perfect match for Melissa's eyes behind the mask that made them seem even bigger—and visibility was measured in dozens of meters.

With her training and her lean Delta muscles, she didn't swim; she flowed beneath the water. And the dark green bikini didn't favor her body by being skimpy. Instead it clung and looked twice as sexy as half the material would have.

A guide led them past fan and sponge corals along sandy bottoms. They startled a Nemo fish—bright-orange-and-white striped—who defended his anemone by bumping repeatedly against Melissa's dive mask when she got too close. A half-dozen green sea turtles, each a meter across, scooted by to get out of the way of a two-meter loggerhead who gazed at them thoughtfully with deep wisdom.

And all Richie could do was gaze at Melissa with no wisdom at all. He'd never wanted a woman the way he wanted her. He wanted to hear her laugh—which would be awkward as they were currently a dozen meters down and had regulators stuffed in their mouths. He wanted to be near her. Not even to touch, though that too, but just because he liked the proximity.

He swam up beside her and took her hand.

He'd never been a hand-holding sort of person. And though he now suspected his mother might be, that definitely wasn't Dad's style. And Richie had done his best to be as much like his father as possible. But there was a simple rightness to holding Melissa's hand.

They spooked an eagle ray, dark brown with white polka dots, that rippled its meter-wide wings as it rose off the sandy bottom and flapped its way off with its long sting-ray tail trailing behind it. A cloud of exotic fish swirled in its wake: blues, golds, greens, big, small, quick, sedate…

The guide was good and found them everything from seahorses to reef sharks.

But most of it was a blur and Richie didn't know how much he'd remember, other than the way Melissa had flowed through the water, her legs impossibly long from bikini bottoms to flippers. Her body… Well, he was just dying here, despite the harness and tanks that masked much of her form.

When they finally ran the tanks dry, having spent well over an hour on a thirty-minute tourist bottle, as they'd learned how to truly conserve air while diving, Melissa spit out her regulator and pulled at their clasped hands until they broke the surface.

“When did that happen?”

“Oh, a while back.” Richie was quite amused that something that had so consumed his attention had gone by Melissa unnoticed and unremarked.

“Weird.”

“Why is it weird?” Richie thought incredible, not weird. Had he done something wrong? With any woman, that was a safe first-order assumption on his part, but he didn't want to be that social-klutz of a guy around Melissa.

“Because”—she shook her hand free of his and then dragged her mask back onto her forehead—“I don't do that much.”

“If that makes it weird, then I'm in trouble. Personally, I've never done it before at all.” And he was in way more than trouble if he didn't get her somewhere private soon.

* * *

“I got you a present.”

“You did?” Richie lit up like a little boy.

“It's nothing really.” Melissa had only remembered it the moment she'd climbed back aboard the dive boat. She dug around in the small bag she'd left aboard. “I just saw it at the gift shop and thought it would be a way to say thank you for bringing me here.”

She held it out and Richie reached for it just as a wave rocked the boat. In an instant, it was gone into the water.

“Damn!”

“It isn't impor—” But Richie was gone over the side after it.

There wasn't a chance that he'd find the little thing in thirty feet of water—but Richie resurfaced hand first with her gift held high.

He clambered back aboard getting her all wet again with the warm Bahamian water.

“It really wasn't that impor—”

“Are you kidding me?” He looked at her aghast. “A gift from my Ilsa is as important as it gets.”

She tried to process that as he bent over to study it. Richie had a way of making her feel special, not just the soldier part of her either. Melissa had never felt so…feminine before. Yes, her features attracted men, and she'd offset that by being the best fighter she knew how to be.

“It's a replica of a Spanish doubloon, pirate treasure,” she explained to hide her sudden discomfort. He was making too big a thing over it. But that wasn't what was bothering her. It was that, instead of feeling he was being too clingy, she was feeling charmed that he cared so much about a souvenir shop gift.

“A four escudo gold doubloon.” He turned it over and over in his fingers, ignoring the water dripping onto it from his hair.

“A cheap copy.”

“Kind of obvious.” He tugged on the black cord that had been looped through a hole so that it could be worn like a necklace. “But otherwise it's a good copy. This would have been a colonial one, seventeenth century by the form of the Spanish seal that was used. In the sixteenth century the cross of the church was—”

She kissed him, figuring it was the only way to stop the lecture. It was a wet kiss that tasted of salty seawater, like an intriguing spice on a luscious, rich meal.

The guide, apparently having enough of such antics, restarted the boat's noisy engine and in moments they were hanging onto the bulwarks as he skimmed them back toward the resort.

Richie did take a moment to slip the medallion's cord over his head. The flash of gold, about the size of a half dollar, bounced and spun against his beautiful chest.

She had to look away before she jumped him right in the boat, guide or no guide.

Melissa had never been to the tropics before, never seen marine wildlife like that. She'd felt like she was swimming inside an aquarium the whole time, that sort of magical place where anything was possible.

And as the dive boat ran them back toward the resort, she supposed that anything was. She'd gone swimming with the handsomest man she'd ever met. He also kept being kind and considerate. She already felt closer to him than any friend in her past.

That was the biggest surprise.

Her big brother had also been her best friend until she'd lost him to the ice. The Royal BC Museum of Victoria, British Columbia, had a small, tight-knit, exhibits department—a couple of carpenters, a metal fabricator, and few others—but she'd never grown particularly close to any of them. She and her brother had met the department manager during a winter hike on Elkhorn Mountain—the tallest peak on Vancouver Island. Elkhorn was ironically within a meter of being half as high as Mount Rainier, which had ultimately cut their brother-sister team in half.

When one of the carpenters went on maternity leave, the manager had invited Melissa in. When the woman hadn't come back, Melissa figured she'd found her life's career. She'd enjoyed the work and the people, but that was as far as it ever went.

Then the ice storm atop Mount Rainier had changed everything.

So, Melissa had gone military.

Started in the U.S. Army. One in seven was female. If she'd stayed with her original unit, she might have made some true friends, but she kept moving around.