Rescuing Rayne (4 page)

G
host smiled
over at Rayne as the royal guards did their thing. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the clouds still hung low in the sky, a foreshadowing of the storm that was sure to return. It might not be raining, but the humidity in the air created a light mist, which he knew could turn into a downpour any second. But it was as if the weather knew Rayne really wanted to see the changing of the guards and the balcony where the British Royals paraded themselves when the world demanded and expected it of them.

“They do this every day?” Rayne asked breathlessly, not taking her eyes off the spectacle in front of them.

Ghost smiled. He’d been smiling like a fool all day, but didn’t give a shit. Rayne made him happy. She saw the world through such a fresh lens. He would’ve thought no one could be that…clean, if he wasn’t seeing it with his own two eyes. Fletch and the others on the team would give him no end of shit for the goofy-ass grin that had been on his face since he’d been in Rayne’s presence. “Yeah, Princess. They do this every day.”

She wrinkled her nose in the cute way she had. “But it’s so…ostentatious.”

Ghost busted out with a short laugh. “It might be ostentatious, but it’s tradition. And the Brits are big on tradition.” He loved how Rayne wasn’t afraid to say what she was thinking. She hadn’t held back with any of her thoughts throughout the day. She’d complained, loudly, that the tiles were wet in Westminster Abby and someone was going to fall and crack their head open, And while blood on the floor of the church was probably not a new thing for the centuries-old building, it probably wasn’t a good idea in today’s day and age of sue-happy tourists. Ghost had noticed that not long after Rayne’s vocal observation, someone had brought out a carpet and unrolled it in front of the doors and placed a “wet floor” sign nearby.

“I get that it’s something they’ve always done,” Rayne continued, “but can’t they do something else to keep up the tradition? I mean, the soldiers have to get sick of all the pomp and circumstance, and it’s a traffic hazard. They have to stop the cars every time they change the guards. It’s crazy.”

Ghost held back his laugh and tried to change the subject. “So is the balcony everything you imagined it to be?” He expected an immediate affirmative answer, but as she was wont to do, Rayne surprised him.

She tilted her head and gazed up at the empty balcony on the other side of a large fountain in the middle of a roundabout. They were standing on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the huge wrought iron gates surrounding the palace. Ghost had tried to get her to get closer to the gates themselves, but she said she’d rather stand across the street so she could take it all in.

“Do you think they’re in the palace now, looking out at us standing here and at the people walking by, wishing they had more normal lives? I mean, I’m here thinking how awesome it would be to be married to a prince, to live inside the palace and be waited on hand and foot, but as you so eloquently pointed out earlier today, the world isn’t a picnic and it’s probably not all that romantic to be a part of the Royal Family after all.”

“Rayne—”

As usual, she talked over him. “I mean, Diana probably thought she’d hit the jackpot. She was young, much younger than I am now, and she grew up in England. Grew up thinking the Royal Family was all that and a bag of chips…American chips, not chips like french fries as they call them here. Then she married into it and we all know
now
that it wasn’t a walk in the park for her. I just—” She broke off and looked over at Ghost and shrugged, almost embarrassed at how she’d been carrying on. She finished quickly, “Yeah, it’s cool to be here to see the balcony.”

“You want me to take your picture?”

“Really? Yes, please.” Rayne posed on the sidewalk with a goofy grin on her face and pointed up toward the small balcony on the front of Buckingham Palace. Ghost handed back her phone, and Rayne pulled him over to her. “Come on, a selfie this time!”

Ghost knew he shouldn’t. Knew he should tell her he had the type of job where he couldn’t risk pictures of him showing up on the Internet. He could simply ask her not to post it anywhere, but even if she agreed now, she could forget, or get pissed, and it could somehow show up anyway. It just wasn’t smart to be in pictures with hook-ups. Period. They’d been warned by the colonel, and everyone on the teams knew to avoid having their picture taken at all costs. But Rayne knew him as John Benbrook, not Keane Bryson, and after tonight, he’d never see her again. Besides that, he didn’t think she was the type of woman to plaster her every movement on social media. She’d flat out said she’d never had a one-night stand before, so he thought it was pretty safe to pose for one picture with her.

Ghost put his arm around Rayne and pulled her close. She laughed and held out her hand with her phone.

“Smile!” she ordered. Rayne took the picture and turned the phone to check it out. She turned to him with a frown. “You didn’t smile,” she complained. “Come on, take another, and
smile
this time, dammit.” Her words were stern, but the tone was teasing.

For reasons Ghost didn’t understand—but he didn’t stop to analyze his actions—he pulled out his own phone. “On mine this time.”

Rayne smiled up at him, obviously pleased he also wanted a picture of them together.

“Okay. But be sure to get the balcony in it. Don’t cut off our heads. Oh, and if you can get the—”

“Hush, woman, I got this,” Ghost told her in a mock growl. “I’m a professional.”

Rayne giggled and put both her arms around his waist and leaned in. “A professional? Professional what, is the question.” She looked up at him again, smiling, joy leaking out of every pore in her body. “Okay, but don’t blame
me
if you don’t get the good stuff in frame.”

Ghost looked down at the woman in his arms. He had one arm around her shoulders and the other was outstretched with his phone in his hand, ready to snap the picture. “I’ve got the good stuff in it, don’t worry.”

Rayne smiled and turned her head to look at his phone.

“Okay, on the count of three,” she bossed. “One…two…three!”

Ghost snapped the picture and put the phone back in his pocket before Rayne could snatch it out of his grasp to look at the photo he’d just taken.

“Ghost! I need to look at it and approve it!”

“Approve it?”

“Yeah, you know, make sure it’s good enough to keep. I might look like a dork!”

“You don’t look like a dork,” Ghost told her with complete honesty.

“Whatever. You didn’t even look at it and besides, guys’ opinions can’t be trusted.”

“Really?”

“Yup. You don’t care about things like hair and makeup or if the picture is blurry.”

“Your hair looks fine, you aren’t wearing much makeup, and the picture wasn’t blurry.”

“How do you know? You didn’t even look at it! What if my eyes were closed? Then you’ll see it later and be all sad because instead of being able to brag to your buddies about the chick you had in London, you’ll have to—”

“I’m not going to brag about having you.”

Rayne didn’t understand the tone of Ghost’s voice. She tilted her head and said seriously, “I thought all guys bragged about their conquests.”

“First of all,
men
don’t do that shit. It’s a dick thing to do. Second of all, I have no desire to show your picture to my friends. This time is ours.”

“But—”

“It’s not that I don’t want every one of my buds to be jealous as hell that I hooked up with a beautiful woman after a wonderful day in London…but what I do, and who I do it with, is my business. And yours. No one else’s.”

“Wow. Um, okay. But you should know,” Rayne wrinkled her nose and shrugged apologetically, “I’ll probably talk about it with my friend Mary. I mean, I won’t go into details, but after that text I sent, she’s going to want to know how it was. As of right this moment, I don’t know
how
it will be, but if I had to guess, I’m thinking you’re gonna knock my socks off. And since it’s my first one-night stand, I’m going to have to spill to my bestie. Girl code and all that.”

She felt Ghost chuckle against her. “You never say what I think you’re going to say.”

“Hopefully that’s not a bad thing.”

“It’s not a bad thing.”

“Okay. So…can I see the picture to make sure my eyes weren’t closed?”

“No.”

Rayne rolled her eyes at him. She finally let go of his waist and looked up at the sky as the rain started gently falling again. She sighed. “Okay, fine. You win. It’s raining again,” she stated unnecessarily.

“You had enough balcony?”

“Yeah.” Rayne turned back to the big palace for a moment. “It really is beautiful though, isn’t it?”

Ghost didn’t answer.

Rayne turned to him. “Okay, I’ve tortured you long enough. What’s next on the agenda?”

Ghost knew just what he wanted to do. “You ever been on a Ferris wheel?”

“Of course.”

“Not like this one. Come on.” Ghost took her hand in his as he hailed a cab.

“
I
’m not
sure about this, Ghost,” Rayne said nervously, holding tightly to his hand as they walked into one of the compartments on the famed London Eye. The day so far had been wonderful. Rayne had no idea how she’d gotten so lucky to have randomly chosen to sit next to Ghost in the airport, and then have their flight canceled, and now to be spending the day with him in the city. But she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She’d simply go with it and hope everything worked out in the end.

“It’s fine, Princess. You think I’d have us do anything where you might get hurt?”

“Uh…”

“I wouldn’t. You’re safe with me.”

Rayne looked up at Ghost.
Safe with him
. If she could’ve, she would’ve melted into a puddle at his feet. He made fun of her for being a romantic at heart, but if he could only hear his own words. She’d tried to tell him how everything he’d done so far
was
romantic, but she was certain he didn’t believe her.

The thing of it was, she
did
feel safe with him. There was no way anyone would bother them. They’d take one look at Ghost, and know instinctively he was a man not to be trifled with. It was what she thought the first time she saw him at the airport. “I know.”

The taxi that had picked them up at Buckingham Palace had a very sketchy-looking driver. If she’d been by herself, she would’ve passed on it and either walked or hailed a different car. But not Ghost. He pulled her into the backseat, leaned forward with his phone, snapped a picture of the driver’s identification, and then pushed a few more buttons on the phone. He’d then told the driver to take them to the London Eye and said in a deep, clear voice that meant business, “I’ve just sent your identification to a friend, an officer on the London Police force. If you value your job, you’ll get us there in one piece. He’s expecting a text from me in ten minutes, which is plenty of time for us to arrive. If he doesn’t get it, the entire force will be looking for this taxi…and you.”

The driver didn’t say anything, but nodded, Rayne thought, nervously. She had no idea if Ghost really did know someone who worked on the police force here in London, but honestly, nothing would surprise her. She still didn’t know what he really did for a living, but she was beginning to think her guess of spy or bounty hunter was closer than she’d thought. She’d been kidding at the time, but now she wasn’t so sure.

The driver had pulled out into traffic and taken them to the famed tourist spot across from the Abbey without any general chitchat. All Ghost had said when they’d left the vehicle after arriving was, “Have a nice night.”

“Come on, you’ll love this,” Ghost told her, bringing her back to the present and the huge sort-of Ferris wheel, leading her to the small bench in the middle of the compartment.

When the door shut behind them, Rayne asked in surprise, “We’re the only ones in here? This thing can hold at least thirty people, what’s going on?”

“It’s raining and it’s a random Wednesday night, Princess, there aren’t a lot of people around. I slipped the guy fifty pounds and he agreed to let us have the compartment all to ourselves.”

Rayne frowned. “You bribed him?”

“Yup.”

“But…” Rayne couldn’t think of a good protest.

Ghost laughed at her shocked reaction. “Just enjoy it, Rayne. It’s fine.”

“Okay. Whatever, but if you don’t really have a friend on the police force and you get hauled off to jail when we get off, don’t expect me to pay your bail.”

They sat together holding hands as the huge wheel started to turn. It wasn’t the same as the Ferris wheels back home in the States. This one moved extremely slowly, Rayne couldn’t even tell they were moving, except for the landscape getting smaller and smaller as they rose into the air.

Rayne stood up and held on to the rail at the window. She felt Ghost come up behind her. He put his hands at either side of her hips and leaned into her, pointing out landmarks in the huge city as they slowly rose higher and higher above the River Thames.

“There’s the Tower of London.”

“Didn’t people get tortured in the basement there?”

Ghost chuckled. “History’s not your strong suit is it, Princess?”

Rayne tried to turn to protest, but Ghost put his hands on her hips and held her in place. He leaned down so his head was even with hers. “Relax. I was teasing. The Tower of London was where the royals originally lived. It’s also been an armory, a treasury, and even the Crown Jewels of England are kept there and highly guarded. But, yes, to answer your question, it was also a prison at one time as well. However, you should know, despite what history likes to make people believe, there were actually only seven people executed there before the 1940s. Now it’s simply a tourist attraction.”

“Oh. That’s kinda a letdown. I was liking that it was a big bad haunted prison where the worst of the worst were incarcerated. You know a lot about it,” Rayne observed.

Ghost shrugged. “I like military history.”

“Obviously.”

Ghost smiled against Rayne’s hair. He enjoyed it when she got a little snarky with him. She was a breath of fresh air compared to the people he usually dealt with in his life.

“What else am I looking at?”

Ghost pointed out other notable landmarks of the London skyline as they continued to gain altitude. When they got to the top of the wheel’s projection, Ghost shifted them until they were looking once again at Westminster Abbey far below them.

“Look, Ghost! It’s Big Ben!”

“Actually, its real name is the Elizabeth Tower.”

“What?”

“The Elizabeth Tower. Big Ben is only a nickname. Before that, it was known simply as the Clock Tower.”

Rayne turned in Ghost’s embrace and looped her arms around his waist loosely. “Really? Good thing they changed it. The Clock Tower is a completely boring name for one of the most well-known clocks in the world. What else?”

“What else what?”

“What else do you know about Big Ben?”

Ghost grinned down at her. “Big Ben is the nickname for the clock and the tower it’s in, but it’s actually the name of the bell itself. Also, it’s not the largest four-faced clock in the world…the largest is actually back home in the States…specifically, in Minneapolis. No overseas visitors are allowed to climb to the top of the tower, but United Kingdom residents are allowed, as long as they’re sponsored by a Member of Parliament.”

“Anything else?” Rayne asked with a smirk, amazed at how many random facts he knew.

“Yeah, there isn’t an elevator. So anyone who wants to get to the top has to climb the three hundred and thirty-four stairs to get there…then come down all three hundred and thirty-four as well.”

“Three hundred and thirty-four? Did you make that up? How do you know that? Have you been up there?”

Ghost smiled at Rayne, but didn’t answer.

“You have! How in the hell did you manage that? Do you know someone in government as well as someone on the police force? You don’t live here, right?”

“Right. I’m a US citizen, just like you.”

Rayne stared at Ghost for a beat, trying to use her nonexistent mind-meld power to get him to tell her his secrets. Finally, she huffed out a breath. “I was right…you’re totally a spy. Fine, don’t tell me. You’re probably best friends with the queen or something.”

Or something was right, but Ghost wasn’t going to let her know that. It was amazing the connections he had because of being a Delta Force soldier. He’d protected, and even saved, the lives of some powerful men and women in his career.

He turned Rayne back around so she was gazing out at the city again. The weak sun was setting and it was slowly getting dark.

Rayne sighed as Ghost gathered her into his arms. He put his hands on her hips and she shivered. God, he felt good.

Feeling her shiver, he ran his hands up and down her arms. “Cold, Princess?”

Jeez. Princess. Could he get any better? He’d called her that a few times already, but it was apparent he’d officially decided that was her new nickname. She should’ve been irritated, but she loved it. “No, not really.”

“Come ’ere.” Ghost pulled her into his embrace fully. His arms went all the way around her so his right hand rested on her left hip and his left hand rested on her right hip. She rested her hands on his forearms. Finally, she sighed.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?”

“I’ve had a good time today.”

“And?” Ghost prompted.

“And I don’t want it to end. But,” she warned as she felt his hands tighten on her, “I’m scared.”

His arms immediately loosened and Rayne missed them. He physically turned her so she was facing him. He put a finger under her chin and lifted it so she had no choice but to look at him. “Scared of me?”

Rayne shook her head. “Not exactly.”

“Talk to me. Explain.”

Rayne bit her lip unconsciously, trying to think how she wanted to voice her fears. “I heard what you said earlier today…and I agree with all of it. But, I’ve never done this.” She gestured between them. “I was serious when I told you earlier that I’m a dork. I don’t do one-night stands. I haven’t had a boyfriend in two years. I like to read. You know I’m a romantic. Sleeping with you goes against everything I’ve ever thought about doing. It’s not safe going to bed with someone you don’t know. I don’t know if you have the creeping crud, or if you’re a sexual deviant, or what. For all I know, your ID was a fake and your name really isn’t John Benbrook and you’re not from Fort Worth. I’m just…scared.

“But you should know…I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a man more than I want you. I’ve never had to forcibly think about something other than what your chest looks like, or how big your…well, how big you are, or even how your hands will feel on my skin. So, it’s all freaking me out. All of it. John, I don’t think I should—”

“Call me Ghost,” he ordered immediately, and when she nodded, he continued, “You’re absolutely right, it’s not safe to sleep with someone you just met. But I’ll tell you right now, I don’t have the creeping crud, I’m not a sexual deviant, although if wanting to taste every inch of your skin, fuck you so hard you’ll still feel me days later, then eat you out after you come apart on my cock is sexually deviant behavior, I’ll have to amend that. And, Princess, you aren’t alone in your attraction. I haven’t stopped thinking about what’s under this sexy outfit since you sat down next to me in the airport. We absolutely should do this. Every woman needs at least one one-night stand in her life. Please God, take what you want. Take me. I said it before, and I’ll say it again, you’re safe with me, Rayne Jackson.”

“How much longer until this thing is back at the bottom?”

“I think we’ve got some time,” Ghost murmured, tilting his head down to hers. “Plenty of time for me to taste these scrumptious lips again.”

Rayne smiled up at the man in front of her and licked her lips in anticipation of his kiss.

“God,” he groaned, “you’re gonna be the death of me.” And he lowered his lips to hers.