Hero Duty (10 page)

‘No dramatics?’ Farrah mock-grimaced.

‘No dramatics,’ Jessica confirmed. ‘But not black, either.’

‘Make things difficult, why don’t you?’ Farrah rattled happily through her stock. ‘Black and blonde hair looks great, especially at night. Hmm.’ She pulled out a deep plum-coloured dress.

‘Too bright.’

Farrah shook the plum silk.

‘No.’

She sighed and replaced it on the rack.

Jessica reached past her and pulled out a dress a shade darker than the oatmeal trousers. There was a warm, golden tint to the pale fabric that would flatter her skin.

‘Wrong size.’ Farrar whisked it off her. ‘Here we go.’ She held up the replacement. ‘Very nice. Gold accessories and high heels. The highest you can wear — I hope your guy’s tall?’

‘Yes.’ Even if Brodie wasn’t hers in the way Farrah meant.

‘Excellent. And here.’ Farrah flourished a length of grey fabric that met Jessica’s dullness criterion all too well. ‘Trust me. Try it on.’ A push directed Jessica back into the change room.

She tried on the sand-coloured dress first. It fit perfectly, though her height meant that it finished mid-thigh rather than just above the knee. Mid-thigh was conservative in Portia’s social circle. The narrow skirt skimmed her butt, hugged her waist and finished in a boat neck with tight sleeves to the elbow, leaving wrists bare for gold bangles.

Farrah approved. ‘Now, try on the grey.’

The grey dress was a revelation. The raw silk warmed against her skin. Its shawl collar neckline emphasised the elegance of her throat and shoulders, before the expensive fabric caressed her breasts, fitting to her waist before flaring out in a midi-skirt reminiscent of the 1950s.

‘Not quite such high heels with this one,’ Farrah said. ‘Let the dress do the talking. It takes a great figure to make this gown work, and you’re working it.’

It was a dress to make a woman delight in her own femininity. The rustle of the silk as she walked whispered of bedroom promises.

‘Perfect,’ Farrah said.

Jessica wondered if Brodie would think it — she — was perfect. With a sudden rush daring, she couldn’t wait to find out. Even if their relationship was professional, she was still a woman.

She bought the dress and went next door for the high heels to match. And then next door to that was a jewellery store, and she bought the gold accessories she’d need for Saturday’s big dinner. Most of her expensive jewellery was back in Canberra.

***

Despite the grief the weekend’s purpose stirred in her and her apprehension of Derek and Portia’s intentions, Jessica entered the hotel with a sense of anticipation that came from knowing she’d look good. More, knowing that she wouldn’t be alone. Brodie would be with her. It had been so long — too long — since she’d anticipated sharing something with someone.

She found her pass card in her purse as the lift climbed. The overflowing bags at her feet were testament to a successful afternoon. She’d tell Brodie that he’d been wise to insist she go shopping. Her mood, as well as her confidence, had improved.

She half-laughed as she struggled to hold all the bags and swipe the pass card. From inside she heard the faint sound of voices. Ideal. Brodie was back and watching television. An instant later she got the door open and her laughter died.

Brodie was back, but he wasn’t alone.

Jessica’s hands tightened on her shopping bags.

He was sitting on the balcony beside another woman, both of them resting their feet on the railing.

Jessica recognised the woman by her uniform.

Then the woman turned her head and her identity was confirmed. Brown hair scraped back and confined in a bun. Alert brown eyes tracking the world. A lean, muscular body poised for action.

‘Sonia.’ Jessica heard her own lifeless voice and grimaced.

Brodie swung his legs down from the railing. He was inside in a couple of seconds. ‘Just a little shopping?’

He reached for the bags.

Jessica retreated. ‘I’ll put them in my room.’ She nudged the bedroom door shut with her shoulder and stood for a moment.

How on earth did Sonia come to be in here in the hotel?

What had Brodie told her?

Jessica had seen the ease between them. The relaxed posture said it all. Shared experiences. Respect.

She put the bags on the bed and hung up the two dresses. The other clothes would survive a while longer. Farrah had folded them carefully. Jessica’s movements felt stiff and unnatural. She scrunched her face up, trying to relax the muscles. She needed to look normal. The disappointment she’d felt seeing Sonia here with Brodie was an emotion she had no right to — but that was something she’d deal with when she was alone.

She faked a smile as she walked out of the room. ‘I didn’t know you were in Sydney, Sonia.’

‘A training thing.’ Sonia dismissed the army and its travelling ways. ‘I thought Brodie would be tucked away in his little country town and instead when I phone him, he’s here in Sydney. So I popped in. Better to talk in person. The more interesting question is how you know him.’

‘Hasn’t he told you?’ Jessica looked at Brodie and quickly away. She’d listened to Sonia’s stories of Brodie and his courage under fire, but she hadn’t admitted to her friend her plan to enlist that courage. And now she really didn’t want to admit her cowardice. Her smile crumpled.

He was watching her too closely.

‘Just that you’re friends.’ Sonia sunk enough innuendo on the last words to make a shock-jock radio-host blush.

‘Not that sort of friends.’ Jessica blushed. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

Brodie and Sonia both held up their bottles of light beer.

‘Just me then.’ She put on the kettle.

They took their drinks to the sitting area. Sonia knew, if Brodie didn’t, that Jessica never willingly sat by an ocean view. Sonia had been there through Jessica’s traumatised teen years.

‘How are you coping, Jessica? The Wicked Witch of Sydney Town getting you down?’

‘The witch’s son,’ Brodie answered for her.

‘Derek.’ Sonia’s tone said it all. ‘Looks gorgeous, but he’s totally spoilt. Someone should kick his butt. Sergeant?’ She looked at Brodie.

‘I’ll hold Jessica’s purse while she kicks his butt.’

Sonia exploded in laughter. Her beer bottle clinked as she put it safely on the coffee table. ‘Great answer.’ Her smiling approval embraced Jessica and Brodie.

The tense line of Jessica’s spine relaxed. She slumped back against the sofa. Whatever Sonia’s relationship with Brodie, it wasn’t romantic, but there was respect. ‘I’m too tired to kick anyone’s butt. Shopping is exhausting.’

‘Wimp.’

‘Hamster.’

Sonia snorted.

‘Hamster?’ Brodie questioned the insult.

Jessica grinned. ‘From school. Sonia could never settle and be quiet. Our science teacher said she was always running her hamster wheel.’

‘And one day it would fall off,’ Sonia finished. ‘It hasn’t yet. Although I need to be going. Brodie, think on what I said.’

‘The answer’s no. I’ll tell Grieg if he calls me. I like that you both thought of me, but I’m not taking that path.’

Jessica tried not to look curious.

‘Becoming a mercenary,’ he said to her.

‘Not a mercenary,’ Sonia objected. ‘A security operative.’

‘No.’

Sonia stood. ‘I know that “no”. All right, but you have skills and training that should be used.’

‘He’s spent enough years being shot at,’ Jessica said.

Brodie and Sonia stared at her. Then Sonia smiled. ‘I forgot that you wouldn’t exactly be impartial. Okay, Jessica, I won’t try to talk your guy into danger while you’re around.’

‘Or at any other time.’ Jessica refused to let her embarrassment at Sonia’s misreading of the situation silence her. ‘Brodie’s made his decision.’ She looked at his strong body, knew the sharp mind that his silence normally hid, and couldn’t stand the pain of imagining him wounded or killed. ‘He’s a civilian, now, with a new life to build.’

‘That’s the truth of it.’ He stood and pulled her off the sofa and into a loose embrace with her back to him, and them both facing Sonia. It was as if they were a couple.

Jessica covered his arms with her hands as they rested at her waist.

Fleetingly, Sonia’s driven personality cracked and displayed something shockingly like envy before she smiled. ‘Be happy. You both deserve it.’ She let herself out of the suite.

Jessica stared at the door, absorbing the intense intimacy of the moment with Brodie. ‘Did she really offer you a mercenary job?’

‘Grieg’s vice-president of an international security firm. We’ve met. He was talking at the conference Sonia’s attending. Apparently he mentioned recruiting me. Sonia thought I should have a heads up that the offer was coming my way.’

‘But you don’t want it?’

His arms shifted around her as he shrugged. ‘Talking with you and Vera today confirmed something for me. There are other battles, important ones, that don’t include the violence of killing people.’

She shivered.

He bent, and his head rested against his hair. ‘Does it frighten you, disgust you, that I’ve killed men?’

Men. Plural.

‘You were a soldier.’ But that wasn’t an answer. His question had come from the heart — perhaps could only be asked when they stood so close, but couldn’t see the pain in each other’s eyes — and deserved an answer from her heart. ‘I trust your strength, Brodie. You lived with the reality of killing or being killed, and survived. Mercy and justice, two sides of the same blade. You didn’t kill with joy. You love your brother and grandfather. It’s in your voice when you talk of them. That capacity for love is the heart of you.’

She turned within his arms, reached up and brought his head down to hers. Her hand lay along the curve of his jaw, fingers skimming his cheekbone. ‘I told you in the beginning. You’re a hero.’ She kissed him briefly on the mouth, a chaste kiss. ‘I trust you.’

The gold in his hazel eyes seemed to blaze. He covered her mouth with his, and this kiss was neither brief nor chaste.

Everything Brodie gave the world was tightly controlled. Disciplined. His kiss was hunger, need and gift.

Jessica couldn’t get close enough as his tongue invaded her mouth and woke her own desire to possess and be possessed. She tasted him and wanted more. She sucked his tongue.

He dug his fingers into her butt and lifted her into his arousal. She released his tongue to moan her pleasure, then whisper his name.

He bit her throat, teeth light. ‘All day, this buttoned-up shirt.’ He slid the top three buttons free and his mouth traced the revealed skin.

Her skin had never been so sensitive. The cotton of her bra tormented her hardening nipples. When his mouth replaced the bra, she’d melt. She wanted to melt, now. She dragged at her shirt and a fourth button popped free.

‘Off. Completely off.’

But he backed her against a wall before she could comply with the raw command and then she couldn’t think at all because he was thrusting against her, making love to her with their clothes on, and she was coming apart, anticipating and meeting his rhythm, their mouths joined once more, feeding on one another.

Outside, in the corridor, the lift pinged. Two men talking loudly of their plans for the weekend walked past the door.

Brodie and Jessica froze.

For an instant he stared into her eyes, then his lashes swept down, shutting her out.

It was more chilling than a bucket of cold water.

She slid her arms from around him and found she didn’t know what to do with her hands. She rested them on his chest.

His heart hammered and his hard body trapped her against the wall. ‘Jessica, I’m sorry.’

She couldn’t find words. She pushed against his chest, and that said everything. Not that she managed to move him.

‘The last thing you needed was me coming on to you this weekend.’

‘If you say I’m vulnerable…’ She began shakily.

‘Maybe I’m the one who’s vulnerable.’ He smoothed her hair. ‘I want to bury myself in you and not let you leave the hotel till Monday. Maybe Tuesday.’

She glanced up, shocked into meeting his eyes.

Their golden blaze spoke of the intensity of his emotions even as he kept his voice steady. ‘We can’t confuse things between us, Jessica. You hired me to be your emotional bodyguard. I don’t know if I understand what you mean by that, but I’ve seen for myself that you need someone by your side. Someone who isn’t demanding things from you. As a lover, I’d demand more than anyone. I’d demand all of you.’

She shivered, because that was sweet and terrifying.

‘We can’t do it,’ he continued. ‘So I’m going to walk away, have a cold shower, and when we go to dinner tonight, I’m just a stranger you’ve decided to trust. I’ll be there for you, but not as your lover.’

‘Brodie.’

Emotion flickered across his face, too fast for her to interpret.

He stepped back. ‘Cold shower. Dinner. We’ll get through this weekend.’

‘And then?’ She didn’t need a cold shower. She felt cold, now.

‘And then I think we’ll find that there’s nothing between us.’ He walked away and closed the door to his room.

***

Brodie braced both hands on the white tile of the hotel shower and let the cold water pound his body. He was a liar. There was something between him and Jessica. It was potent as hell, strong enough to drag his deepest emotions out of him. He hadn’t been this out of control in years. He’d been drunk on the scent and warmth of her, the softness of her body and the way she responded to him.

When she’d whispered his name, he would have followed her to hell and back.

But that was all intangible stuff. The facts, the truths that stood out like torched-car bodies in a bomb-blasted street, were stark realities of the differences between them. She had a PhD and a billion dollars. He’d skidded through high school and was currently unemployed. She was a cup of tea. He was a bottle of beer. The differences wouldn’t matter if their relationship was a weekend affair, but he knew himself, and he’d learned the same of Jessica: for them, sex wouldn’t be casual.

It would be frigging amazing.

He swore under his breath. If the lift hadn’t arrived when it had. If the two strangers hadn’t walked past. If he hadn’t had that cliff edge return to sanity, he’d know how Jessica looked, sounded and felt as she orgasmed.