Secret Assignment (11 page)

He bent his head. She lifted hers.

The first light brush of her mouth to his felt like an electric spark, zinging through his bloodstream. Her mouth parted, her warm breath mingling with his.

He dipped his head again, kissing her more deeply, drinking from the well of passion suddenly overflowing between them. He’d meant to slake his thirst with just a taste, but when her hands clutched his forearms, and her body rose, soft but fierce, to flatten against his, he felt the weakening threads of his control beginning to snap and tear.

He roped his arm around her, driving her back against the edge of the sink. Her breath exploded in his mouth, a gasp of pain, and she tightened her grip on his forearms.

He let her go immediately, stepping back in horror.

She stared back at him, confusion written all over her face.

He turned away with a jerk, shaken by the rapid loss of his tightly held control. “Let’s get this done,” he growled, angry at himself and, illogically, at her for making him feel the way he did right now, hot and aching for something he didn’t dare let himself have. He hurried back to the front room, taking the first aid kit with him.

He sat down again, digging in the kit’s inner pockets for bandages. By the time she reached where he sat, she looked composed and cool, taking the bottle of antiseptic and sterile cleansing pads he handed her with steady hands. So calm was she, in fact, that he wondered if he’d merely dreamed the kiss that had ripped his world asunder.

She went behind his chair and examined his head again, her touch light. “Whatever hit you split the skin.” She started wiping antiseptic on the wound, making it sting. “It’s not deep. You’re lucky it didn’t bleed even more—head wounds can be real gushers.”

“No stitches needed?”

“I don’t think so. It’s not even bleeding much anymore.” She spread some sort of ointment across the scratch and stepped back. “I don’t think you even need a bandage. Just be sure to clean it regularly.”

He closed the first aid kit and laid it on the table. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Her eyes narrowed. “What do you plan to do about the yacht you found?”

“I told a friend in the Harbor Patrol. He’s got his boats keeping an eye out for it.”

“I looked into the RIB you mentioned—the Zodiac Bayrunner? It can’t go far without refueling. Engine’s just not big enough and it eats a lot of gas.” She sat on the sofa again, her hands flexing in her lap. He forced himself not to meet her curious gaze, unable—or maybe just unwilling—to answer the unspoken questions in her dark eyes.

“They may have other avenues of approach besides the Zodiac,” he warned. “From what I saw in the crew’s quarters, these people aren’t messing around. They want to get on this island in a bad way. They want to get inside Stafford House in a bad way.”

“I wish Lydia would head to the mainland where she’d be better protected.” As soon as the words escaped her mouth, she looked appalled. “I didn’t mean—you’ve done an amazing job of taking care of her—”

“But I can’t be here all the time,” he said flatly, not offended. He’d tried to convince Lydia to consider an early move himself with as little effect. “Mrs. Ross doesn’t really want to leave at all, but the state has made her a generous offer, and she knows she’ll be far more independent on the mainland. But that doesn’t mean she wants to leave a minute earlier than she has to. Nightshade Island’s been her home nearly her whole life.”

Shannon looked wistful, her expression tugging at his curiosity. But he refused to ask her what she was thinking about. He wasn’t going to let himself get sucked any deeper into her life than their temporary isolation together on the island required.

That horse is out of the barn, cowboy.

He shook off the taunting voice in the back of his mind, the one that sounded entirely too much like his father’s. “I appreciate your coming here to help me out. Really. Thanks for the first aid.”

“But get lost?” she said.

“It’s been a long day. I could use a shower and some shut-eye.”

She pushed to her feet, drawing his gaze to her again. He’d found her cute the day before, dressed up in her prim little suit and snapping her angry eyes at him, but this Shannon Cooper, soft and sweet-smelling in faded jeans and worn cotton T-shirt, was pure temptation. More womanly than youthful, softly sexy rather than coltishly adorable.

Even more dangerous.

“We’re not going to talk about what just happened, are we?”

He shook his head. “We’re going to forget it.”

She shot him a wry smile. “I have a good memory.” But she didn’t protest as he walked her to the door, torturing himself with his rigid self-control. He didn’t reach over to tuck behind her ear the loose lock of hair that had escaped her messy ponytail. He didn’t catch her hand as she stepped onto the porch or beg her to stay a little longer.

He didn’t lean against the door after he shut it behind her, wishing she’d stayed.

Not for long anyway.

He went directly to the shower and ran the water as cool as he dared, even though it would do little to soothe his aches and bruises. Within a couple of minutes, he’d had all he could take. Shivering, he exited the tub and briskly toweled himself dry, not bothering with dressing as he headed into his darkened bedroom.

As he pulled back the covers of his bed, a flicker of movement outside caught his attention. He crossed to the window and quickly realized the flash of white he’d seen was Shannon Cooper’s T-shirt, glowing in the cool moonlight as she walked carefully up the darkened trail to the lighthouse.

What the hell was she doing?

She circled the lighthouse, bending at one point to pick up something. A second later, a narrow beam of light cut through the darkness, drawing a small circle of illumination against the time-worn stone of the lighthouse wall.

Her penlight. She’d said she’d dropped it when she was in the lighthouse the night before.

He watched, waiting for her to reverse course and move back down the path toward his house. But as she turned to do just that, she stopped, her head craning to look upward.

He followed her gaze and saw only the darkened windows of the service room and the reflection of moonlight on the glass that enclosed the lantern room. But whatever had drawn her attention upward held it, luring her toward the lighthouse entrance.

She disappeared into the gloom inside.

Chapter Eight

Shannon had seen nothing out of the ordinary. No flicker of movement in the windows, no flash of color, no ghostly hand against the lantern room window. Nor had she heard anything more substantial than the whisper of the Gulf breeze through the dry fingers of sea grass growing hip-high around the base of the lighthouse.

But the hair on the back of her neck rose, a warning sign that something in the lighthouse was different.

If this were a horror movie, she thought as she eased her way toward the lighthouse entrance, there’d be a man with a butcher’s knife just inside, poised to make the pretty but dim heroine pay for being too stupid to live.

But this wasn’t a horror movie, and she’d seen herself today how seriously the local fishermen and even the Harbor Patrol had taken their roles as gatekeepers. No way had a Zodiac Bayrunner gotten anywhere near Nightshade Island today.

This is really about regaining honor, isn’t it, Cooper? Last night you got spooked and ran like a little girl.

Well, so what if it was? The only way something retained the power to frighten a person was if she let it, right? The lighthouse had spooked her last night. Tonight, she would conquer her fear and rob the creepy old place of any power over her.

The penlight painted a pale streak of illumination across the old stone walls of the spiral staircase and speared the darkness overhead as she directed the beam upward. There was only stillness above, as far as she could see. No floating wraith of the old lightkeeper. No gremlins waiting in the shadows to dash her down the stairs to the stone floor below.

She was pleased with how normally she was breathing when she reached the service room. A little winded from the exertion, her heart rate up a little, but not bad at all. She doubted any of her brothers could have managed the climb in the dark any better.

Without the press of dangerous invaders and a ticking clock to drive her into haste, she took a good look around the service room. It was dusty. Draped with cobwebs. Dank and cool, drafty where the wind moaned through the cracked window and the narrow space beneath the door.

She looked at the closed door. Had she closed it last night? She didn’t remember whether she had or not.

She flashed the beam toward the far wall, where a small light about the size of a pinhead glowed red. It was part of a switch connected to a cast-iron box that seemed to disappear into the wall where the foghorns emerged on the other side.

The mechanism was on. Had it been on last night?

Definitely not when she entered the service room. She’d have noticed the light shining in the gloom. And she’d been too freaked out to notice anything but the fastest way out of the room after the horn went off.

At least everything seemed to be working now. Maybe there’d been a short. Or the connector might be loose, which made it susceptible to coming apart again.

She studied the switch mechanisms under the penlight and made sure anything that connected to anything else was firmly seated. Nothing seemed particularly loose.

She stood very still, just taking in the atmosphere. Musty air filled her nostrils, with just a hint of the salty sea blowing in on the breeze.

And something else.

Gun oil, she realized. Reminiscent of Gideon sitting at the kitchen table at Stafford House, cleaning his Walther.

She closed her eyes, the image of him still imprinted on her brain—Gideon, standing there in the caretaker’s house, stripped to the skin and about the most intensely masculine thing she’d ever seen. Dark hair had curled across his sternum, narrowing to a dark line that intersected his belly and dipped beneath the waistband of his jeans. He had a flat, toned abdomen and wide, powerful shoulders, his body well-proportioned without looking overmuscled. His skin was lightly tanned and nicked here and there with the souvenirs of a life in the military, scars large and small, including a Marine Corps insignia tattooed on his left deltoid muscle and a surgical scar in the shadowy valley beneath his left pectoral muscle that suggested a close brush with not making it back alive.

If she’d plugged her ideal parameters for the perfect male body into a computer search engine, she didn’t think she could have come up with a better representative sample. She’d tried not to stare, but his sheer, imposing masculinity was a thing of beauty.

And when they’d kissed, oh so briefly—

Enough.
She opened her eyes and looked around the empty service room, grounding herself in the stark reality. He’d stopped the kiss. He didn’t want things between them to go any further, and that was fine with her. She was there to do a job, not to moon over a big, surly stranger built like a superhero.

She made it to the ground floor without stumbling. And if she felt the hair on the back of her neck prickling, as if unseen eyes followed her all the way to the ground, well, that was just her silly imagination.

* * *

B
Y THE TIME
Gideon had pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, Shannon’s penlight reappeared up in the service room, outlining her slim silhouette as she moved about inside.

She was still up there when he slipped out his back door and started up the crooked path to the lighthouse, his body protesting in creaks and groans, like a rusty engine forced into use. As he neared the lighthouse, the light disappeared. He heard the sound of her footsteps ringing on the metal stairway as he neared the entrance and had to step back as she emerged from inside, her stride forceful, as if she were on a mission.

She skidded to a sudden stop as he loomed up in the dark, slumping back against the lighthouse wall. “You scared the hell out of me!”

“Sorry.” He sort of meant it. Mostly. Even though he still wanted to know what she was doing climbing to the top of the lighthouse in the middle of the night.

“I thought you were going to bed.”

“I thought you were, too,” he replied, ruthlessly ignoring the mental image that arose from thinking about Shannon Cooper and a bed in the same sentence. “What were you doing up there?”

She flashed a sheepish smile that made his stomach turn flips. “Exorcising ghosts.”

“Ghosts?”

“I got freaked out last night while I was up there and the horn sounded. Ran away like a big baby.” Her chin lifted. “I felt the need to prove to myself that I could go back there and be okay.”

“And did you?”

She nodded. “While I was up there, I checked the connectors on the foghorn. Everything looks as if it’s pretty tightly seated. All the connections were solid. I’m not sure why it didn’t sound last night.”

He felt a ripple of shame at not thinking to check the connectors himself that morning before he left the island. What if the switch hadn’t worked again, leaving Shannon and Lydia without any way to call for help?

“You look dead on your feet.” Shannon closed her hand around his elbow, nudging him toward the path. “You should be in bed.”

His body concurred with her, though probably not in the spirit she’d intended. “I’ll walk you back to Stafford House.”

“It’s not necessary.”

He was beginning to think it was. If only to exorcise his own ghosts.

Shannon Cooper had become a powerful temptation to him, a distraction from his mission to protect Lydia Ross and her husband’s legacy. He’d almost let a kiss derail him from that mission entirely. He needed to prove to himself he could handle having her around without letting his libido get the best of him.

“Maybe you should reconsider staying there,” Shannon said as they neared Gideon’s house. “Safety in numbers.”

“You afraid to be there alone?”

She turned to look at him, her eyes shining in the moonlight. “Actually, I’d like to have you where I can check on you. That’s a pretty big lump on the back of your head.”