Her Enemy Protector (13 page)

“There’s a motion alarm on that,” she warned, nodding significantly in the direction of the painting.

Joe nodded his understanding. “I’m not planning on stealing it,” he remarked aloud. He reached up and took the painting down and, sure enough, an ear-splitting alarm made her slap her hands over her ears. But it didn’t prevent her from seeing Joe reach up and tear the camera off the back of the painting and its wires out of the wall. The device was wired right into the spotlight that shone down on the painting.

“Get dressed,” Joe ordered her shortly over the din of the alarm. “It’s time to go downstairs and have a little talk with your father.”

But she continued to stand there and watch in dismay as he snatched a towel out of the bathroom and wrapped it around the jumble of wires and cameras. A pounding noise added to the chaos and it took her a second to realize it was a fist slamming against her door. Joe rehung the Renoir and headed for the door, jerking his head sharply in the direction of her closet. Right. Clothes. She hustled off toward her dressing area.

As she crossed the open space, she felt Joe’s gaze on her as surely as if he’d reached out and touched the warmth between her shoulder blades with his fingertips. A purely sexual thrill whispered across her skin.

Ducking into her closet, she stopped just inside the door to catch her breath and heard Joe talking to someone outside.

“What the hell’s that noise?” he complained to Gunter. “Man. I just kissed Cari and that thing went nuts. You got some sort of sex alarm installed in here, or what?”

Cari giggled and pushed away from the wall. Clothes. She needed to get some clothes on. She hustled into a tennis skirt and matching top while Gunter explained curtly that there was a motion sensor on the priceless painting.

Joe harrumphed. “You got any more of those damned things in here? I mean, we’re likely to make a whole lot of stuff shake, rattle and roll, if you get my meaning….”

She grinned as she tied her shoes. She’d better go rescue the poor German from her irrepressible spouse.

“Thanks for turning that thing off, Gunter,” she said as she stepped into the room.

Both men turned to look at her, one in exasperation and the other in frank male appreciation.

Joe commented to the older man, “Is she a knockout, or what?”

Gunter blinked in surprise, and his features softened. “Miss Ferrare is quite beautiful, yes.”

“Why Gunter! Thank you!” she exclaimed.

Joe held out his arm to her and she grasped his forearm, looping her fingers around rock-solid muscles that were surprisingly tense. She noticed the rolled towel tucked under his other arm. Damn. What outrageous stunt did he have up his sleeve now? He escorted her to the doorway and paused beside Gunter.

All kidding erased from his voice, Joe spoke to Gunter in deadly earnest. “The name’s Mrs. Smith now. Don’t forget it.”

On that note, he moved gracefully past the stunned German and hauled her down the hall while she stumbled in shock.

“Are you nuts?” she murmured under her breath. “You practically threatened Gunter!”

Joe murmured back, “There’s no ‘practically’ about it, princess. That was flat-out meant as a threat.”

“I’ll say it again. Are you nuts?”

He smiled down at her gently. “Trust me, baby. I know what I’m doing. I know guys like him and I know what it takes to establish respect with them.”

She frowned up at him. She knew so very little about him. If, indeed, he was a member of Charlie Squad, he certainly did know about men like Gunter. He
was
a man like Gunter.

But then Joe derailed her train of thought completely by announcing, “C’mon. I need to teach your old man a little respect, next.”

Oh, God. What was he going to do now?

Chapter 7

C
arina eyed Joe apprehensively. “What are you planning to do?” she asked cautiously. “Do I need to talk you out of it?”

Although Joe smiled casually, there was a distinctly icy glint in his eyes. Loudly and, no doubt, for Gunter’s benefit behind them, he announced, “C’mon, babe. I’m hungry.”

Rico, the thug from Colonel Folly’s car window last night, was lounging against the wall at the end of the hallway leading to her suite, chewing a toothpick. When they approached him, he pushed vertical without comment and led the way downstairs to a large dining room.

A wooden table stretched the length of the room, a dozen tall, ornate chairs in the shape of narrow thrones arranged around it. A wrought-iron chandelier and hand-painted tiles around the walls lent the room a powerfully Spanish feel. Her mother had decorated this space, and Cari had always loved its calm, elegant feel. She liked to imagine that her mother had been as calm and elegant.

Her father already sat at the head of the table, reading a newspaper and sipping a cup of coffee. He didn’t look up as Joe held her chair at Eduardo’s left and then took a seat beside her. She winced as Joe unobtrusively slid the rolled towel underneath his chair.

She ate in silence and was abjectly grateful when Joe followed suit and didn’t pop out with any outrageous comments directed at her father.

Throughout the meal, Eduardo, his lawyer, Sevi Gallegos, and Gunter talked about the business climate in South America, which was a relief to Cari. She doubted Joe would, in dumb gigolo mode, dive into that particular conversation. All in all, it wasn’t a bad first meal with her father and the unpredictable American at the same table.

But she’d let down her guard too soon. As a maid cleared away their dishes, Joe leaned down under his chair and grabbed the towel.
Oh, God.
She caught herself looking around surreptitiously for someplace to take cover if this thing exploded into a firefight.

Joe stepped toward Eduardo and Rico tensed, leaping to Eduardo’s side. But Joe glided forward so fast that he brushed right past Rico before the guy could actually block him. Joe moved so fluidly and so quickly that he didn’t look like he’d done anything extraordinary. Rico stared, apparently confounded as to how Joe had just gotten past him to Eduardo’s side.

She watched in sick apprehension as Joe raised the towel high in the air and let go of all but the end of it. It unrolled rapidly and the jumble of wires and cameras fell into his free hand.

He laid the handful of electronics beside her father’s plate and said casually, “Obviously, there wasn’t time last night to remove these before we took occupancy of our room. I took the liberty of doing it for your people.”

Eduardo looked at Joe sharply. Reassessing. Joe had just shown himself to be a much brighter cookie than Eduardo had initially given him credit for.

But then Joe shrugged and grinned. “I mean, if you’re planning to put us on the Internet doing the horizontal mamba—you know, to make a little extra cash on the side—you should’ve asked. I mean, you gotta have the right moves, play to the cameras, stuff like that.”

Eduardo choked on his coffee and only narrowly avoided spewing it all over his shirt. Cari gaped. If she didn’t know better, she’d say Joe had timed that remark to coincide exactly with the moment when her father had taken that big mouthful of coffee. Her mouth snapped shut. She didn’t dare smile.

“C’mon, baby. Let’s go practice some moves in case your old man—uhh, daddy—decides to cash in on us.”

Now it was her turn to choke. She sputtered, and he pounded her good-naturedly on the back.

Rico leered at Joe. “Give it your best shot, buddy. You still never know when you’ll be on camera.”

Joe turned slowly. Real slowly. Took a leisurely step forward until he stood right in front of the bodyguard. And then something funny happened. Joe didn’t move a muscle, but it was almost as if he grew by a couple of inches. The room went dead silent. This bunch knew a challenge when they saw one.

Joe practically whispered, “You put one second of Cari and me, or Cari, or even her bedroom on film, and I’ll break you in half. Carina’s my
wife.
And you will treat her with utmost respect at all times.”

He didn’t have to utter the “or else” hanging in the air. It was almost louder for his not having said it. Rico obviously couldn’t decide whether to puff up in threat response or yield the field for now and just walk away.

In consequence, he ended up just staring openmouthed at Joe’s back as he turned casually toward her, returned to his normal size and said, “On second thought, let’s go for a swim, princess. I feel a sudden need to clean up.”

Amazed that he’d walked away from that confrontation alive, Cari followed Joe outside to the crystalline pool gleaming under the late-morning sun. The ocean was vivid turquoise today, the beach a strip of pale gold. The lawn was emerald, the pool deck stark white and the pool itself nearly as blue as the sea. The quality of the light was extraordinary, glowing with an almost surreal intensity. Or maybe it was the exhilaration of having witnessed someone, anyone, stand up to one of her father’s meanest thugs. Ah, Joe was good for her soul.

She left him in a chaise lounge by the pool and excused herself to head upstairs and change into a bikini. Joe, with outstanding foresight, had worn a pair of baggy swim shorts down to breakfast.

She dug out the skimpiest Rio thong bikini she owned, looked at it for a second, and shocked herself by putting it back in the drawer. Instead, she pulled out a white one-piece suit that was a hundred times more conservative and, truth be told, a great deal more complimentary to her figure and her golden tan. Sometimes a girl just wanted to look her best. Today was one of those days. Besides, her father would croak if she wore something classy for once. Maybe he’d rightly credit Joe for the change.

She took a critical look at herself in the full-length mirror in her closet. Generally in the past, she’d thought of her extraordinary looks as merely one more weapon to wield in her private war against her father. But today…today they meant more. They were a gift. Something she could bestow on Joe to thank him for risking his life for her. She reached for the bottle of sunblock on the shelf beside her floppy sun hats and array of sunglasses. And smiled. She tossed the bottle into a canvas bag, along with a book and a beach towel.

When she stepped outside through the doors in the dining room, Joe lifted his head lazily to glance at her. And he froze, his head several inches off the lounge chair. “Kowabunga,” he exclaimed.

Warmed all over by that ridiculous little greeting, she put on her best high-fashion catwalk and sashayed over to him, gifting him with a full display of her long legs and curving body.

“Could you put some lotion on me, darling?” she purred, holding out the bottle of sunblock and sinking down into his chaise.

That wiped the smirk off his face fast. “Uh, sure,” he mumbled, glancing over at Gunter, who made no secret of watching them from a chair in the shade of the covered porch in front of the TV room.

And then Joe’s hands touched her and all else fled before the onslaught of images and sensations that rolled over her. The smooth glide of his warm palms down the curve of her spine provoked blatantly sexual thoughts. And despite the heat of the sun baking her, a chill shivered across her skin, nearly orgasmic in the shuddering shower of tingles shooting through her. How was it that lust and worship could be one and the same? Sin and absolution as one?

No matter how chaste the hand gliding up the back of her thigh, she wished for it to slide off the slope of her thigh and between her legs, to plunge into her darkest, most secret places and stroke them to a screaming release. She ached to let her legs fall open, to invite him to do it. It was unnatural, nearly criminal, to keep her knees pressed tightly together against her rampant lust, her lips pressed shut against a moan of welcome, an invitation of longing.

His fingertips trailed down her arms toward her hands and she marveled at the impromptu anatomy lesson of the nervous system. Who would have guessed that every single inch of the underside of her arm was peppered with sensitive nerve endings that shimmered and sparkled under the gentlest of caresses?

And then the lesson changed. His hands grasped her shoulders, rolling the muscles of her neck and upper back under the heels of his hands, and her moans of need became groans of pleasure escaping against her will to mingle with the pounding rhythm of the ocean nearby.

His hands lifted away from her and she nearly cried aloud at the sudden void left behind. His weight shifted on the chaise beside her and she nearly jumped out of her skin as his hands settled on her right calf. He massaged his way down the limb, circling her ankle and digging his thumbs into exactly the right spot in the arch of her foot to send melting pleasure rushing through her.

Her other foot got the same treatment, and not a solid bone remained anywhere in her body. She was a formless mass of heat and desire, molded helplessly like melting cookie dough to the lounge supporting her. The sun radiated its own brand of heat, twining in and around the moment like a molten ribbon of gold, binding it irrevocably into her memory. She whimpered faintly. Joe’s hands stilled on her skin.

Cari turned her head to look at him and caught a flash of movement over his shoulder. And fear speared through everything else she was feeling to pierce her heart like an arrow of ice. “Don’t stop,” she mumbled. “My father’s watching.”

Without moving his lips, Joe murmured, “Where is he?”

“In his office.”

Joe reached for the bottle of sunblock and tipped more of the lotion into his palm. His hands began their smooth slide across her skin once more. “Let him watch.”

Her eyelids drifted closed in spite of themselves. On a long exhalation, she placed her trust in Joe and let him worry about her father for the moment. She simply enjoyed, savoring the warmth of the sun and Joe’s magic hands on her body.

A blissful eternity later, his hands lifted off her flesh and she cracked open one eyelid enough to see him stretch out on the chaise beside her, his face turned up to the sun and his eyes closed.

“Are the office windows bulletproof?” Joe mumbled, so low that Cari could barely hear him.