Operation Summer Storm (18 page)

“She’ll be all right you know, your sister,” he told her, picking up a shell from the sand near his feet.

“Yeah, I know. She has a talent for landing on her feet,” Summer told him dryly. Her gaze rested on his hand as he rubbed his thumb across the smooth, worn surface of the shell.

“What you did for her…” He paused, struggling to formulate the word from the strange emotion he was battling. “It was impressive,” he finished lamely. Talk about understatement.

“She’s my family.” Summer shrugged, then lifted her gaze away from his hand to his face. “It’s what you do,” she added simply.

His frown seemed to spark one of her own. “It must be hard…living like this…giving up everything about your old lives…everyone thinking you’re dead. I can’t imagine how that must be tearing your family apart back home,” she said softly, and he heard the genuine pain in her voice.

He let go of her gaze and looked away, “There’s no one back home to miss me, ” he told her.

“You don’t have parents either?” she asked tentatively.

He shook his head. “My mother died when I was a kid and I lived with my Dad until I was old enough to leave home and join the Marines.” He met her gaze long enough to give a cynical twitch of his lips. “I figured if I could survive living with that mean bastard all that time, I’d pretty much be able to handle anything the Corps dished out. And at least they fed you,” he added without thinking.

He felt the light touch of her hand on his arm and his revived animosity immediately fell away. He frowned again. She soothed him. It was a revealing discovery. She was like some kind of medicinal balm—‘
apply to wounds for instant relief,’
he thought, thunderstruck.
Was she like this with all her patients, or just him? If so, she needed to come with a warning label.

“Shouldn’t you be resting that?” Summer asked, nodding at his shoulder and snapping him from his distracted thoughts.

“You’re starting to sound like Maloney,” he muttered.

“Let me see. Has Maloney checked it today?” she asked, moving his shirt apart, professional and efficient, but playing havoc with his fragile hold on his libido.

She ran her smooth hands across his shoulder and he flinched involuntarily, not in pain, but because her touch ignited the rocket between his legs. She must have thought she’d hurt him though because she quickly lifted her eyes from the wound, settling it on his face in concern.

His breath almost caught in his throat. Her eyes were deep pools of ocean blue. He knew he was staring at her, but he couldn’t seem to pull his gaze away. Maybe this was some kind of post traumatic stress. It happened quite a lot out in the field, but somehow he didn’t think what he was feeling came under that banner.

Slowly he leaned toward her. Her eyes were tinged with uncertain surprise, but she didn’t look away. The first initial tingle as her lips shyly brushed against his sent a flutter through his stomach, then a full bolt of electricity as she leaned in closer and demanded more.

His head spun and his senses reeled as Summer matched him kiss for kiss. Slowly he lowered her back onto the soft, warm sand, growling his approval as Summer started spreading his open shirt apart. Then a jolt of pain shot up through his arm as he leaned over her, taking his weight on his bad side.

“Damn it,” he swore as he sat back and held his injured shoulder, fighting back waves of frustrated desire. “Damn it to hell,” he added under his breath for good measure.

Summer froze. Then scrambled into a sitting position and put a gentle hand on Tate’s’ good shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Tate chuckled painfully.

Summer bit her lip, “I’m sorry.”

Tate looked at her with a slight frown. “What for?”

“For shooting you, of course,” she spluttered. “Don’t you realize how horrible that makes me feel?”

Tate couldn’t help it. He started to laugh.

“What are you laughing at? I could have killed you!”

He sobered quickly, then took both of her tiny hands in his larger one. “But you didn’t. Don’t worry; I’ll get over this,” he said, nodding down at his shoulder.

She didn’t look overly convinced but at least she stopped worrying her bottom lip—making him wish he was the one worrying it—and doing a lot more besides.

Summer sat quietly, seemingly unsure what to say to him when he broke the silence.

“You know, just having the information in the file, puts you in a great deal of danger. You took a huge gamble telling us what you had.”

Summer shrugged. “Truthfully, this was never about the file. I didn’t even read the thing at first; all I wanted from Michaels notes was the contact name for someone to get Willow back.”

“Not many people would have flown out of the country for a meeting with someone they’d never met before, based on a set of notes.”

“Michael had obviously included the contact details for a reason, I had to trust him.”

Tate scooped sand into his hand idly, lazily making little anthills in the sand before him. “Did your sister agree with you surrendering the file to us, before she finished her story?”

Summer dropped her gaze to the sand between them. Tell him, tell him, a small voice urged inside, but she couldn’t form the right words to explain it. “Of course,” she lied as smoothly as though she’d been doing it all her life.

“Why do I get the funny feeling you’re not telling me something?” he asked in a soft voice.

“Maybe because you’ve been living around mercenaries for too long,” she shrugged.

“Maybe that’s the reason I’ve fine tuned my bullshit detector. It’s been going off a lot around you lately.”

Summer felt a grin play on her lips, “I don’t think that’s your bullshit detector…”

He caught her gaze, and the smile dropped from her lips. His brown eyes darkened from milk to dark chocolate in an instant, and he pulled her toward him, dragging her over his chest so that she was laying over him. He took her lips, in a ruthless, demanding kiss that she didn’t pull away from. If anything, she took it deeper and slid lithely across his body, molding her softness to him like a second skin.

Smoothing her T-shirt up her body, he tossed it beside them in the sand and let his hands roam across the lacy texture of her bra. Within moments he’d unclasped it and set her free from its confines. Cupping the soft flesh in his rough palms he watched as she dragged her lips away, dropping her head back and letting out a long, low moan that had him almost coming undone.

Dropping her head back to look down into his face, he had to catch his breath as her eyes shone down into his with a look so full of want and need that he felt his own throat tighten in response.

“Summer, I…don’t have any…protection…”

He swore. What kind of moron opens his big mouth when he has a hot, willing woman ready to do the deed?

He did, he admitted with a weary sigh, Mister Responsibility, that
’
s who. He wasn’t doing it for his sake at this point in time, he was more than willing to throw caution to the wind and risk it, but somewhere deep inside, he knew he couldn’t leave Summer to face any repercussions alone, not when his future was still so uncertain.

He saw her briefly considering the urge to say, to hell with it, as well, but then her own common sense kicked in and she silently leaned down and snagged her clothing, rolling off him to get dressed.

“I should have brought something with me…” he apologized awkwardly.

“It wasn’t as though it were a pre-meditated kinda thing.” She smiled weakly.

With a low growl, he ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what you do to me woman,” he said, getting to his feet and pacing before her. “I should have enough sense to stay away from trouble,” he muttered.

Summer snapped a frown toward him, sitting straighter. “Me? Trouble? Hey, if anyone is trouble, around here, it’s you. I’m not the one, with a fake ID and bad attitude.”

“No. You’re just the goody two shoes, who looks all sweet and innocent. That is of course, until you show your true colors and resort to blackmail to get your own way,” he flared.

“I did what I did to get my sister. Pardon me for having a heart instead of a machine.”

He clenched his jaw, and turned to face her. He saw the hurt cross her face, so fast, if he’d blinked, he’d have missed it. It was his fault; he shouldn’t have kissed her...again. Summer deserved something a lot more substantial than what he could give her. “I have to get back,” he got to his feet and began to walk away.

“Tate.” She scrambled up from the sand to stand beside him. “Wait.”

He turned around to face her—his expression wary.

“I need to know what you’re going to do with it, with the file,” she said, looking at him, and waiting for him to answer. She held her breath as his face transformed into stone.

“Why? You said yourself you were never interested in it.”

“Because I need to know…”

“Why?” he asked skeptically. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“There were other men killed in that explosion, and Michael risked his life, to make sure their story was told. I owe it to them to make sure you’ll do the right thing and not use it for some kind of, vendetta.”

“Vendetta?” he asked in a soft voice. “For what exactly?”

“Are you going to use it to blackmail Tréago? To make money?”

His jaw clenched so tightly, that she thought he was going to break something. “What I do or don’t do, with the file is none of your concern. I kept my word—your sister is safe; now you better keep yours,” he warned, turning away from her and stalking back towards the base.

* * * *

She felt like a traitor. She knew deep inside that Tate was not the bad guy in all this. However, she needed to make sure he was not going to let greed, or the ruthless need for revenge sway him, once he had his hands on the file. There was something so potently hostile between Tréago and these men, that she worried they might not get a chance to enjoy their freedom, if they tried to take on Tréago, with the file alone.

Turning to go back to the hut, she caught a flash of something from the corner of her eye. Shading them from the setting sun she spotted a small dot far out to sea. She watched it for a few more moments, before reluctantly leaving the tranquility of the beach. As she trudged through the soft, deeper sand higher on the beach, she lifted her gaze to the sky and saw the gathering clouds in the distance. A cold breeze blew her hair across her face and she shivered against its chill. She picked up her pace and hurried back toward the base.

As she came into the clearing, she saw Tate seated at the outdoor table, his shirt flapping open in the warm evening breeze, showing a large span of muscled torso. Summer caught a glimpse of the white bandage that covered his right shoulder from beneath the open shirt and felt that annoying little stab of guilt.

She raised her gaze and realized he’d been watching her with those dark, hooded eyes, as she’d been ogling him.

Hurrying toward the steps—planning a graceful escape inside, she ran into Maloney as he came down the steps at the same time. With a grunt from Maloney and a strangled gasp of surprise from Summer, they collided. Then adding to the debacle -both took a step aside, to let the other pass…in the same direction.

So much for a graceful escape, she thought wryly, with a shake of her head. With a small growl, Summer, stepped backwards down the steps and waited for Maloney to move before she climbed the steps again.

“You didn’t see Del down there did you?” Maloney called to her, as she was about to go inside.

Turning around and shook her head, “Not unless he was out in a boat.”

“A boat?” both Tate and Maloney repeated simultaneously—their looks guarded.

“As I was heading back—I saw a boat but it was a long way out.”

Maloney grabbed a pair of binoculars hanging from the corner of a chair and ran off toward the beach.

“What sort of boat?” Tate asked.

Summer shrugged her shoulders, “A boat. I don’t know—it was too far away to see.”

Maloney ran back, and headed for a small locked store shed beside the hut. “We’ve got company Ox.”

Tate followed Maloney into the shed and began to pull out rifles. “Here take these,” he said, throwing two of the big black guns at her. Catching them automatically, Summer stared at Tate as he packed various items into packs and tossed them out to land at her feet.

Del pounded into camp, stopping as he saw the activity. “Good, I was just coming to tell you. I spotted them from up at the point. They’re close; we’ll have to hustle. I’ll get Tup.”

Still snapping her head from one person to the next like a fast moving game of tennis, she was still trying to figure out what was going on, when Tate stuck his head back out of the shed.

“Think you can carry all that?” Tate asked, handing her the pack while she tried to juggle the guns.

“To where?” she asked apprehensively.

He tossed his head in the direction of the hut. Summer stepped out of the way as Del moved passed to help Tupper down the stairs, “Just follow them,” Tate said.