Black Ops Warrior. Amelia Autin
to be taken seriously as an engineer. Not as a woman engineer. So she’d never worn it at work, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know how to apply it. She’d experimented in middle and high school like most girls, and she knew what suited her. But it had been a long time.
Niall looked fantastic in gray slacks and a long-sleeved white dress shirt, but then he had this morning, too, in much more casual clothes. His slightly-too-long brown hair would have looked ungroomed on another man, but on Niall...it was perfect. Out of the blue, she thought of Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp in the movie Tombstone, and realized she’d hit the nail on the head. She could so envision him as a gunslinger in the Wild West.
He was watching her mouth again. Something about that intent stare thrilled Savannah to no end. She would normally be flustered by male attention of that sort—not that she’d had all that much of it in her life, in large part because she’d eschewed it—but still...
It was different with Niall, though. He made her feel desired, but safe...in an unsafe sort of way. In other words, as safe as she wanted to be.
But she didn’t want to be. She’d spent all that money on this dress and everything else, for one reason and one reason only. She wanted to throw caution to the winds. She wanted to be reckless for once in her life. She wanted to be wild and wanton. And she had every intention of letting Niall teach her how to be wild and wanton, things at which she was absolutely sure he was an expert.
Which was why she’d bought something else at the drugstore. She’d hidden the little box in the nightstand by her bed, but she was acutely aware it was there. And if she played her cards right tonight, Niall would be using its contents. Multiple times.
* * *
Niall told himself it was just the dress and the makeup. Fine feathers make a fine bird, he reminded himself cynically. But he was lying to himself...and he never did that. Which meant it wasn’t the dress, and it wasn’t the makeup. It was the woman he was attracted to. He’d been entranced by her lips earlier today, and there hadn’t been a trace of lip gloss on them then.
Desire had tugged at his loins when he’d created that little space for her on the Great Wall, and he’d wanted to pull her into his arms and possess that mouth with a single-mindedness that made a mockery of his assignment. Desire that had flared out of nowhere. Desire that now threatened to get out of hand.
She’s your target. The reminder helped, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
* * *
“So tell me why this year is so special,” Niall invited. They’d filled their plates at the buffet, then reseated themselves in the secluded corner booth he’d charmed the hostess into seating them in.
He watched as Savannah swallowed a bite of the excellent shrimp in lobster sauce he’d already sampled. His brain took a quick detour as he considered pressing his lips to the delicate hollow of her throat, clearly visible in that temptation of a dress. He dragged his attention back with an effort when she said, “My parents died three months ago.”
He blinked. He knew that fact—of course he knew. He knew just about everything there was to know about her. But he’d never have thought their deaths would be something she—
“They were booked on a round-the-world cruise,” she continued softly, her eyes filled with shadows. “To be followed by a series of cruises along ancient waterways—the Nile, the Amazon and the Yangtze Rivers, among others. It was the dream of a lifetime for them. It’s not as if they’d never travelled before, but not like this for many, many years...mostly because of me.”
“Because of you?” He knew why, but he wanted to encourage her to confide in him. To trust him.
She hesitated. “My parents used to travel a lot during Christmas and summer breaks from teaching, mostly in the US. And they continued doing that when I came along. But...” She glanced down at her plate, then back up at Niall. “The summer I turned four, we flew to Hawaii—Oahu, actually. I loved it, right up until I got separated from my parents in a Waikiki open-air tourist market. Masses of people. All strangers. All crowding around me. And when I started crying, everyone tried to help. But that only made things worse. People kept coming up behind me, touching me. I panicked and began hyperventilating. I passed out eventually, collapsing into a little ball on the ground. By the time my parents found me...”
“So that’s why you don’t like crowds.”
“Not crowds so much,” she explained, “although I prefer not to be in them. It’s more people coming up behind me. Touching me unexpectedly. Like today at the Great Wall.”
“I understand.” He didn’t have to fake the empathy.
“I had therapy, of course. And I don’t panic nearly as often as I used to. But for the rest of my childhood and adolescence, we never traveled anywhere that might bring on one of my crowd-induced panic attacks. Which pretty much ruled out most tourist destinations. It wasn’t until my parents no longer had to worry about me that they were free to travel again, but...”
She paused as if her thoughts were a million miles away, and Niall asked, “But...?”
“Then my mom got sick. Kidney failure. Which meant she was tied to a dialysis schedule that wouldn’t allow her to travel far from home, especially overseas. You can arrange for dialysis someplace other than your home hospital here in the US, but she was also on a waiting list for a transplant. I don’t know if you know how that works, but when you’re on the list they give you a beeper. You have to be at the ready the instant a kidney becomes available, because there’s a very limited time window. Otherwise it goes to someone else, the next blood-and-tissue match on the list.
“And my mom had a somewhat rare blood type, which meant the odds of a match weren’t all that good to begin with. She wasn’t about to risk missing out on a kidney transplant, so they never went anywhere they couldn’t return from at a moment’s notice.”
She sighed softly. “My mom finally got her transplant two years ago. But my parents had been planning for the day they’d finally be free to travel again long before that. They were going to take a spectacular trip to make up for all the trips they hadn’t been able to take over the years, first because of me, then because of my mom’s health. And they were going first class all the way. They’d planned what they would see and do at each port of call, in minute detail.
“They had to wait, somewhat impatiently, to make sure my mom’s body didn’t reject the donated organ, but the trip was all they talked about, especially toward the end, when it was finally going to be a reality. They’d both arranged sabbaticals so they didn’t have to worry about how long they’d be gone—they were professors at the University of Arizona, you see. My father in mathematics, my mother in ancient history,” she explained unnecessarily, although she didn’t know it.
“And...?” Niall prompted when she fell silent.
“And they were on the way to the airport to embark on their grand adventure, when a trucker fell asleep at the wheel. At least...that’s what the police theorized. His truck jackknifed on the I-10 freeway, then flipped over, pinning my parents’ car beneath it.”
Even though Niall already knew all of this, hearing the words from Savannah, hearing the grief in her voice, did something to him, and his brows drew together in a frown. He reached across the table and touched her hand briefly. “I’m so sorry.”
She drew a shaky breath before continuing. “It still hurts,” she said in a tight little voice. “But it’s not as bad as it was at first.”
“I lost my dad some years back,” Niall admitted before he could stop himself. “And yeah, it still hurts. It will always hurt. That old ‘time heals all wounds’ saying is a load of crap. But it does get easier. Trust me on this.”
She smiled mistily at him, and Niall had the sudden, eerie sensation of falling.
* * *
Five tables away—not close enough to hear the conversation, even though