Trust Me

This time, he sent his brother a reproachful look, which was met with a slight, live-with-it shrug. A little ruefully—apparently St. Gabe wasn’t above some minor payback—he returned his gaze to the client. “Yes, ma’am, that’s true.”

She pursed her lips. “He also assures me that if anyone can get my Delilah out of this mess she’s in, it’s you.”

“Possibly.”

“Possibly?” Her arctic-blue eyes drilled into him. “And what exactly do you mean by that, pray tell?”

“It means I have a general idea of your granddaughter’s situation, but I’d be doing us both a disservice if I made any promises until I know more,” he said easily.

There was a prolonged silence as once again she considered him, then she abruptly murmured, “Hmmph.” Leaning sideways, she reached into her large handbag and pulled out a fat document-sized manila envelope.

“I anticipated this,” she said brusquely. “It’s all here. Delilah’s original itinerary. A list of the people she met with. Transcripts of my conversations with that detestable Condesta’s representatives. Photos of and information about the compound in Santa Marita where she’s being held. Oh, and a photo of her, of course.”

“This should be very helpful.” Dom took the proffered envelope and set it down in front of him. “First, however, I think we’d better establish what, exactly, you want me to do. Take over negotiations? Handle the exchange?”

To his immense gratification, she snorted and said briskly, “Certainly not. I have lawyers to do those things. Lawyers and advisers and business managers, whom I allowed, against my better judgment, to convince me that dealing with Delilah’s captors was the right thing to do…” She trailed off, then squared her shoulders and ratcheted up her already ramrod posture. “I may be old, Mr. Steele, but I’m not stupid, at least not often, and I don’t care for extortion. I want you to go to San Timoteo and bring Delilah home where she belongs.”

He did his best to squelch an inner cheer. “Okay. But there are still things we need to discuss.”

Her mouth curved in a moue of annoyance. “If this is about your fee—”

“No, ma’am,” he assured her. “I’m sure you’re good for it.” He swallowed a grin at her huff of indignation, then got down to business. “What I want is some insight into your granddaughter. Is she a leader or a follower? Easygoing or high-strung? Quick off the mark or more of a deep thinker?”

“Why on earth do you need to know all that?” she snapped.

“Well, let’s see.” He lazily drummed his fingertips against the tabletop. “I guess because it would be helpful to know what to expect. Is she likely to scream or faint when I show up? Will she feel compelled to offer her opinion about every move I make, or will she do what she’s told? Is she going to get hysterical if we have to make a run for it and she breaks a nail?”

Abigail’s icy blue eyes glinted. “You may count on Delilah to behave sensibly, Mr. Steele. I didn’t raise her to indulge in histrionics. She’s a level-headed, responsible young woman as befits her station, and I can assure you she understands that sometimes duty—or circumstance—requires one to subvert one’s emotions and do what needs to be done.”

“Okay,” he said mildly. “But if she’s such a paragon of virtue, then how’d she wind up enjoying Condesta’s enforced hospitality?”

“I never claimed my granddaughter was perfect,” she said stiffly, raising her already elevated chin another fraction. “For all her many sterling qualities, once in a while, on exceedingly rare occasions, Delilah can be unexpectedly…stubborn.

“This trip was a perfect example. Although it could easily have been handled by one of the staff, whom we pay to do this sort of thing, and despite the fact that she has countless obligations that require her attention at home, she insisted on personally going to San Timoteo to inspect a school that had applied to the Anson Foundation, a nonprofit organization my late father started, for funding.

“As I understand it, once her business was completed she decided to attend some sort of local celebration. It got out of hand, the police were called in and when the young man she was with was threatened with arrest—” her lips tightened “—Delilah foolishly objected.”

Dominic nodded. The granddaughter might be a few years older and a little less flaky than he’d initially envisioned, but the rest of the story was still pretty much what he’d expected—a classic case of Rich Person Behaving Badly. “So how do you think she’s holding up?”

“I’m sure she’s managing. The Anson blood runs in her veins,” the old lady said coolly, as if that said it all.

And maybe it did, Dom decided. At least it didn’t sound as if the granddaughter was likely to wilt like a hothouse flower at her first sight of him. Or complain endlessly about his choices and methods, or because he hadn’t brought her champagne and caviar or her own private masseuse.

Not that he’d ever intended not to rescue her if given the opportunity. Even if Mrs. Sommers had revealed that her darling Delilah had all the charm of a polecat on steroids, he’d planned all along to go to San Timoteo to relieve El Presidente of his unwilling guest.

But he wasn’t a fool. For all his no-sweat approach to life, he believed in doing things right. And in the security business, that meant careful planning and meticulous preparation, which meant obtaining all the information you could.

Still, it was probably past time to end the suspense and let Queen Abigail know he was willing to save her bacon, so to speak. “All right. I’ll do it.”

“Excellent!” Mrs. Sommers abruptly appeared years younger, for the first time revealing the genuine concern hidden beneath her crusty exterior. “How soon can you leave?”

“Sometime in the next forty-eight hours. Let me look this over—” he tapped the envelope “—make some calls and I’ll get back to you later today with any other questions that crop up and a more definitive timetable.”

“Excellent,” she repeated. Grasping her purse, she started to stand.

Already formulating a list of things he needed to do, he pushed to his feet. Once again, Dom and his new client shook hands and then Gabe offered his arm to escort her from the room. The two were almost to the door when Dom reached in and drew out the sheaf of papers. Paper-clipped to the top was a five-by-seven color photo. He glanced at it.

A shock like the blast from a stun gun jolted through him.

“This is your granddaughter? Lilah Cantrell?” Damned if his voice didn’t come out in a croak.

Mrs. Sommers turned, still graceful despite her years. “Delilah, yes. Her father was the product of my union with my second husband, James.”

He fought to keep his expression neutral. It took only a second for him to realize why he hadn’t made the connection: when he’d known Lilah, her grandmother’s name hadn’t been either Sommers or Cantrell, and the family mansion had been referred to as—he racked his brain, and suddenly he had it—the Trayburne estate.

But even so…He felt Gabriel’s sudden scrutiny like a touch. Yet Gabe being Gabe, his brother didn’t let on. “Come along, Abigail,” the other man said smoothly. “Margaret has the paperwork you need to sign at the front desk.”

The second they’d cleared the threshold, Dom turned his attention back to the glossy studio image clutched in his hand. A fine-boned blonde with china-blue eyes, a tantalizing mouth and an expression both reserved and challenging looked back at him.

Well, hell. Delilah Sommers was actually Lilah Cantrell. And despite her grandmother’s claims to the contrary, Lilah was every inch a self-centered society princess.

That he knew from personal experience.

Because Lilah Cantrell was the first—and only—woman he’d ever fallen hard for. The one woman he’d never been able to predict. The only woman ever to have shown him the door before he’d been sure he was ready to go.

And definitely the last woman on earth he’d deliberately seek out.

He uttered the first half of Gabe’s earlier curse.

“Something wrong?”

He jerked his head up, startled to find his older brother standing in the doorway watching him.

He immediately blanked his face. “No.”

And there wasn’t, he told himself firmly, shoving the picture back into the envelope. So what if he’d just agreed—no, insisted—on not just seeking Lilah out, but being allowed the privilege of saving her shapely little prima donna butt? He was a pro and he intended to act like it.

After all, the past was just that—the past. And he and Li had been barely more than kids at the time of their clichéd summer fling. What’s more, he’d known from the start they had no future. If in the intervening years he’d occasionally thought about her with a pang of regret, it was only because the sex had been incredible. Hell, more than incredible. Maybe the best of his life—

“You sure you’re all right?”

Gabe’s question yanked him back to reality. He thought about it for all of half a second and then felt a genuine smile form on his lips. “Yeah, I am. Why wouldn’t I be? I get to leave this Popsicle weather, go where I can work on my tan and foil some bad guys in the bargain. Plus we get paid for it.

“Trust me, bro. I can handle it.”

Three

“So you do this for a living?” Lilah’s eyebrows, shades darker than her pale hair, rose eloquently. “You—your brothers—are mercenaries?”

Apparently he hadn’t explained things as well as he’d thought. Just as this particular rescue mission wasn’t turning out to be the cakewalk he’d predicted.

That didn’t mean he had to stand here and let her get things wrong. “No,” Dom said flatly. “Mercenary implies no standards, no ethics, no values, no rules—and we stand for all those things. We don’t break U.S. law, we don’t work for anybody who isn’t one hundred per cent legit. Trust me. We can afford to be choosy.”

He refrained from adding that, in his opinion, he and his brothers had a lot in common with the guy whose nickname they shared, the one with the red cape and big S on his chest. Like him, they believed in justice and cared enough to risk their lives for it.

What’s more, unlike the majority of the populace, they’d all honorably served their country; every one of them was former military Special Operations and had put in their time on numerous tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and even darker corners of the world.

To her credit, Lilah appeared to get the message. She worried her bottom lip for an instant, then seemed to catch herself. Squaring her shoulders, she forced herself to meet his gaze head-on. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything…negative. Or—or to suggest I’m not glad you’re here. I am. It’s just…it’s unexpected.”

He couldn’t argue with that. “Don’t worry about it.”

God knew, he didn’t intend to. After all, it looked as if things were finally going his way. And that was good, since for a while, he had half-seriously started to think of this job as the Extraction from Hell.

First, his flight into San Timoteo had been diverted. Then, when he’d finally gotten wheels down, he’d found his local contact had vanished. Which was why it had taken him a frustrating thirty-odd hours to discover that: (A) Lilah wasn’t where she was supposed to be; (B) that once he had located her—here, at what the locals called Las Rocas, an isolated, heavily guarded compound sixty-five rugged, sparsely inhabited miles from Santa Marita, the nation’s capital and only large city—his best bet of getting her out was to get himself thrown in; and (C) the best way to do that involved volunteering to get his ass kicked.

Complicating matters further, his satellite phone had been confiscated by San Timotean customs and the last intel he’d received had warned that a big storm was due in at the end of the week. What’s more, thanks to this required detour to the island’s remote south coast, he and Lilah had missed their scheduled ride out of the country. So now, in addition to everything else, he was going to have to improvise that part of the rescue plan, too.

But then, he liked to improvise. And he was good at it. Good enough that, so far as he could see, there was now only one problem that might really give him grief.

And she was standing a few feet away.

Hell he’d forgotten just how pretty Lilah was. Damned if she still didn’t look just like the Disney version of Cinderella, all gilt hair and big blue eyes and the sort of skin you usually only saw in body lotion commercials.

Unfortunately—at least as far as he was concerned—unlike a proper G-rated fairy-tale heroine, she was also hot. She’d been hot at eighteen and, if his current itchy-fingered reaction to her was any indication, the subsequent years hadn’t done a thing to dim her fire.

Not that there was anything blatant about it. Or her. Far from it. She had a way about her, all elegant carriage and air of restraint that made a guy think of garden parties and symphony openings, not mud wrestling and strip joints.

And that was a big part of the problem. Call him perverse, but at age twenty it had been her look-but-don’t-touch demeanor that had first attracted him. He’d always loved a challenge—still did—and her sorority girl air of being unattainable had been like a red flag snapped in a bull’s face. All it had taken to hook him had been one look. After that, the only thing he’d been able to think about was sinking his fingers into her pale silky hair, cradling her close and kissing the primness right off that delectable mouth.

Of course, that’d been then and this was now. He was thirty years old. A man, not a boy. And she hadn’t just burned him all those years ago, she’d barbecued him. Which was not an experience he had any intention of repeating.

So how to explain the gut-wrenching, skin-tightening, gotta-have-some-of-that desire that had blasted through him the instant she’d laid her hands on him earlier?

“I just want to be sure I understand,” Lilah said, mercifully interrupting his thoughts.

Well, yeah. That makes two of us, sweetheart. I’d like to understand how I can be standing here thinking of all the different ways I’d like to have wild, swing-from-the-chandeliers sex with you when I haven’t seen you in ten years.

“Gran came to your office and hired you to rescue me?”

“That’s right.”

“And your brother has worked for her in the past. That’s why she went to him and how you came to be here?”

“More or less.”

“And after we…knew…each other you left Denver and joined the Navy?”

“Yeah. Now, if you don’t mind, we don’t have a lot of time before the sun goes down and the guards bring dinner, so let me ask the questions.” He’d think about his backstabbing libido later. Say back in Denver. Over a tall cool one at his favorite tavern. In the year 2025. For now, it was time to get down to business.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“Know what?”

“About dinner.”

He reminded himself to be patient, that it was understandable she’d have questions. “Because I spent yesterday surveilling this place. There’s a big tree about five hundred feet from the compound entrance. It’s tall enough that I could see them ferrying food from the kitchen. Now I need you to tell me whether they come back after dinner to pick up your plate or wait until morning.”

“So far, they’ve always left it until morning.”

“Good. Do you see anybody in between time? Do they do a bed check or come in when the guard changes shifts?”

“No. Why?”

“Because.” He felt for the opening in the seam of his pants just below his hip. “If that’s the case, then once the food comes we essentially become invisible until dawn. And I plan on us being gone from here way before then.”

Disbelief—and a gleam of longing?—flashed in her eyes. Yet she was too well-schooled to expose her emotions longer than that single moment. “Well, yes, that would be nice. But short of dematerializing and squeezing through the bars—” her voice was suddenly cool and uninflected “—I don’t see how you’re going to accomplish that. And even if you could, you’d still have to get the corridor door unbolted and then get past the guards you’re so intent on avoiding. Somehow I don’t see any of that happening.”

He pulled the thigh-length, razor-thin cutting blade free from its hiding place. “Neither do I. That’s why we’re not going out that way.”

“We’re not?” Lilah’s lips parted in astonishment.

And just like that, that prickly wanna-touch sensation washed over him. Because she really did have the most luscious mouth….

“No, we’re not,” he said firmly, forcing himself to concentrate on their surroundings, to triple-check that he hadn’t overlooked anything, even though the layout was already firmly inscribed on his brain. Located on a windswept headland on San Timoteo’s southern tip, the cell block occupied the far end of the walled-off compound that was also home to a commandant’s residence and modest barracks.

The jail itself was the shape of a basic rectangle. At the top of the shorter, western wall was a solid iron door that opened from a guard house into a narrow corridor boasting a single small, skinny window. The corridor, roughly five feet by forty, fronted four small, barred cells that were identical in size and shared a common solid back wall. Their only other notable feature was their utter lack of creature comforts.

Deciding the surroundings were stark enough to depress even his overly active libido, Dom returned his gaze to Lilah.

Who’d taken yet another step back from the bars and was now standing in the sole shaft of sunlight, allowing him to see what he’d missed before due to the deep shadows that draped the room like a heavy blanket.

A smudge of bruises circled her right wrist, a larger contusion ran from shoulder to elbow on her opposite arm, and a fading but still telltale smear of yellow-tinged purple marred one side of her jaw.

The sight made him go cold. Suddenly wishing he could turn back time and have a real go at the sons-of-bitches guards instead of pulling his punches the way he had when he’d let them overpower him, he struggled to contain his anger and keep it out of his voice. “Lilah.”

His voice may have sounded normal, but clearly something—the rigidness of his stance, the muscle that had twitched to life in his jaw—must have tipped her off to his sudden tension because she went very still. “What?

“Did they hurt you?” he asked softly.

“Hurt me?” Despite her cautious response, the fingers of her right hand reflexively touched her battered wrist, revealing she knew what had prompted the question.

“Were you raped?”

Abruptly, her expression cleared. “No.” She shook her head. “No. I’m not positive, but I think El Presidente issued orders that I was off-limits…that way.”

“Oh, yeah? Why would he do that?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe because he only wants my money.”

“So the bruises are from what?” he persisted.

“This—” she indicated the area above her hand and gave a little shrug “—one of the guards got a little rough. The rest—” inexplicably, a faint flush colored the curve of her elegant cheekbones “—are from when I was being held in Santa Marita. There was a car accident. Well, I suppose accident might not be exactly the correct term—”

“But nobody forced themselves on you?” he interrupted, wanting—needing—to be sure.

“No.”

“Okay, then. That’s…good.” As if his vision had suddenly improved—maybe he’d taken a harder hit to the head than he’d thought—he now saw that in addition to having been roughed up, she was on the brink of being not slender but fragile, the kind of look people got when they’d gone too long without adequate food.

The discovery didn’t improve his temper. He wanted her out of here now. Even more than he wanted a piece of the guards, and he wanted that pretty damn bad.

The fierceness of his feelings caught him off guard, but he’d think about it later. Over that beer he planned to drink back home. Without a certain blue-eyed, satin-skinned blonde to distract him and make him crave things he didn’t need.

“If we’re not leaving through the door, how do you plan to get us out of here?” Lilah asked.

She was nothing if not persistent. “If I tell you, will you stop with the Twenty Questions?”

“Yes, of course. I—”

“Deal,” he said flatly, cutting her off. “To answer your question—we’re going out through the hole I’m going to cut through the wall.”

Lilah watched in shock as Dominic turned his back on her. Stepping close to the expanse of rough gray concrete that formed the back of the cell block, he began to run his hands over it like a blind man exploring a lover’s face.

A score of questions screamed for answers in her head, competing for space with a dozen exclamations. The two common themes seemed to be “how on earth?” and “you’re out of your mind.”

Yet his silence, combined with his averted back, made it perfectly clear he didn’t want to talk.

Well, neither did she, Lilah thought, retreating to her bed. She could use some time to think. And to sift through all the contradictory emotions that were bouncing around inside her like rubber balls in a cement mixer.

She was barely settled, however, and nowhere close to sorting through the jumble of doubt, hope, fear and frustration vying for her attention, when the sound of the bolt being drawn in the outer door splintered the silence.

Her gaze snapped to Dominic. In the fraction of time it took for the door to swing open, her jailmate whirled and slid down the wall to sit in a crumpled heap on the floor, his arms dangling limply, his eyes shut, his head flopped to one side.

If she hadn’t known better, she’d have believed he was an injured man just barely holding on to consciousness. Heaven knew, the guard certainly bought it. Flicking the big American a dismissive look, he said something clearly contemptuous in San Timoteo’s version of Spanish as he headed for Lilah’s cell.

To her surprise, Dom answered back, his voice slurred convincingly.

The guard laughed. The sound was ugly, as was the lecherous look he sent Lilah’s way as he stooped down and slid the small tin plate clutched in his meaty hand through the gap at the base of the bars. He stood and spoke again, blew her a noisy kiss, then strolled back out the door.

The second the sound of the bolt sliding into place faded, Dominic straightened. “Bastard,” he bit out, his voice low but lethal.

Curiosity overcame Lilah’s earlier pique. “What did he say?”

“Nothing you need to hear.”

She pursed her lips. It was hardly the response she’d been seeking, but at least he was talking to her again. “I never knew you spoke Spanish.”

“I learned as a SEAL.” He hitched his muscular shoulders a fraction of an inch in one of his trademark shrugs. “Turns out languages are easy for me.”

“Oh.”

His gaze flicked to the plate. “You should eat.”

She considered the meager portion of beans and flat bread. The food was an unappetizing shade of gray, and she knew from experience it looked far better than it tasted. Even so, the sight of it made her stomach squeeze and her mouth water.

Yet how could she eat when he didn’t? “We’ll share it.”

His reply was immediate and forceful. “No. We won’t. You need it a hell of a lot more than I do.”

He clearly didn’t intend to budge. Since arguing would no doubt be fruitless, Lilah dutifully stood and retrieved the plate. She picked up the crude wooden spoon, unhurriedly ate exactly half of what was there, then walked over and slid the plate under the narrow gap between the floor and the bars.

Without a word, she went back to her bed. When she turned, he was giving her a hard look. She gazed unflinchingly back.

With a curse that made her wince, he reached for the plate, jerked it close, and ate.

“Do you really think you can hack through solid concrete with that flimsy bar?” she asked a moment later as he mopped up the last morsel of beans with the last scrap of bread. “And what about the guards? Won’t somebody outside notice what’s going on?”