Chapter 2
Footsteps crack on the boards of the old jetty outside. I can only hope it’s my dark defender returning. If it isn’t, this may be the last dress I ever wear. That’s an insane thing to think about, but everything about this evening has been insane.
The door swipes open, and I shuffle upright on the lounger. A man wearing smartly pressed trousers and a thin, dark green turtleneck sweater marches in, hands me a small gym bag. The waves in his dirty blond hair, his delicious light tan, piercing blue-gray eyes and utterly gorgeous face remind me of...
“You...!”
“Put those on, and leave your damp dress in the bag...Evelyn.” He pretends not to notice my jaw hanging loose on its hinges, instead crooks a charming, superior grin as he unpacks the contents of the gym bag for me. “These might not be a perfect fit, but they should do till we reach England.”
“Are you talking about Carlisle? You mean that asshole from the party?”
“One of those is correct.”
“But—but you were shit-faced.”
“And you found me repulsive.”
I scoff. “Damn right.”
“So we were both pretending.”
“Yes! Wait...what?” He’s being clever, too clever, and smooth, too smooth. I recall what the redhead with the bony shoulders said about him—that he comes on strong, and that I wouldn’t want to turn him down a second time. So I pull the towel up to my chin, making double sure no skin is showing anywhere.
“Who are you really?” My mind tries to thread together some kind of explanation for him being here, with me, instead of passed out in bed with his Latina wife, but it’s beyond me right now. Needlepoint isn’t my strong suit. Just ask the poison-tipped ring on my...
It’s gone. It must have come off during the struggle on the balcony. Damn.
“Barrett Carlisle. Really tired, sore, and in uncharted waters...”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You know who I am, you know what I am. There are only a handful of people in the world who are privy to that information.”
I swallow hard, glance to his pocket, where I imagine there’s a lethal weapon of some kind with my name on it. But if he wanted me dead, why did he bring me with him? Why has he just revealed his identity?
“Get changed,” he says. “That wet dress would bury us both if someone saw it.”
“What—change with you in here?”
He rolls his eyes, and then turns his back. “I’ll talk, you get dressed.”
A part of me wants to insist he wait outside: I might be rocking this sapphire number tonight—his words, not mine—but I’ve always been self-conscious about my figure, never having had, until recently, one I was even remotely happy to flaunt in public. As far as clothes go, baggy and casual is my thing. On the other hand, nothing about this night smacks of the Athena Katsaros I’ve known all these years; these are uncharted waters for me, too, and there’s something exciting—no, deep-down thrilling—about the fact that I don’t shrink from danger. Real danger... But more than that, I’ve never felt as alive as I am right now. Those oil fires I saw burning in the eyes of Valdez and his henchman earlier: I’m not so sure they weren’t my eyes I was seeing—in reflection because right here, right now, something’s igniting me again.
This time it isn’t hate. It’s more subtle, flavorsome, a slow-burning fuse to a secret cache of erotic fireworks I didn’t even know I possessed. It’s something to do with the danger, the disrobing, and him—a killer, protector, and a billionaire Brit. All it would take would be a little turn of his head and I‘d have no defense against the piercing eyes of my dark defender. He’d see right through me, and I’m shivering with fear and anticipation just imagining it.
It makes no sense. But here’s the thing: I’m so going to do it.
“Okay, who the hell is she?” I ask, dropping the towel.
“Buggered if I know...”
“So why did you call me Evelyn at the party?”
“It was either that or Tallulah.”
It's cute. I can’t help but twitch a smile. “Why not just use my real name? You knew who I was.” It suddenly hits me how significant that fact is, because I never attend those kinds of parties, and I’m pretty sure I’d remember if Carlisle and I had met before.
“I was trying to embarrass you. I needed you to leave,” he says.
“Why?”
He sighs. “Because the reason I was there, what I came here to do, I did it for you.”
“It was for me?” I slowly unzip my dress at the side; let the cool air feel its way in. It gooses my bare back, and my nipples begin to harden against the damp fabric hanging loosely out front. The thin shoulder straps need only gentle sideways tugs in order to slip...
“I’ve studied you, Athena. I know all about you. And I’m always very thorough.”
Oh my God... The dress falls, catches on my wide hips, exposing breasts that have never seemed so perfectly shaped, and nipples that have never felt so erect. I’m suddenly dying for him to see me and terrified at the same time. It’s an intoxicating spiral of desires that leaves me breathless. I shove the dress down past my hips, feel it pool about my ankles. Close my eyes to let my imagination take over...try to see myself through his eyes.
“How do you know me?” I ask.
“At first, she was just an orphaned girl who needed my help. Now, she's a woman to me. A rare, brave, completely pain-in-the-arse woman, who happens to be a hundred times more beautiful than she ever thought she could be. She has these exotic, painted eyes that are pure Scheherazade, and a body a man could die for.”
I gasp, open my eyes, and meet his gaze less than halfway. The urge to hide screams inside, but fades behind a shivery desire to know more. About what he sees, what he likes, what I can do for him if he comes closer.
He says nothing, just walks up to me, and his hungry blue-gray eyes exploring every inch of me on the way. My breath hitches. I start to tremble. An aftershave the flavor of a mountain lake in summer fills my part of the boathouse. But it isn’t my part, never was; this is all his. My assignment never reached past the balcony. I’ve been under his protection since then, and this is my final—and willing—surrenders to my dark defender.
If you want me, you can take me.
“I came here to help you get even,” he says, draping the beach towel over my shoulders. “To right a wrong someone has done to you. And this...this wouldn’t be right.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Shhh... It’s all right. You’ve been through a lot; not just tonight, but for months now. I know how it is, what you’ve been through. And you’re not thinking straight.” He holds me to him, gentle but firm, the way Papa used to hold me when I’d done something bad that had left me upset.
That memory, and everything that has happened since—my wayward years apart from him, our tentative reunion, his sudden violent death at Valdez’s bidding, the packed but lonely funeral, Roger Stimson’s kind words after, and this whole crazy quest for vengeance—it all spills out in bitter sobs in the arms of my dark defender.
We lie there for hours, Carlisle and me, together on the sun lounger. He says we can’t make a move till tomorrow anyway. His rendezvous is in the early afternoon, and until then we’re safest here, out of sight, incommunicado.
So who is he really? What’s his part in all this?
“I was hired to kill Valdez.”
“Yeah, I kind of get that part,” I reply, “but who hired you?”
“It was someone who wanted him dead.”
Oh-kay...Interrogating Barrett Carlisle is like picking the world’s most stubborn lock—you really need the right tools for the job. I haven’t a clue what those might be, but I persevere anyway. If I’ve gotten this close to him, he can’t be immune to me.
“But if you did research on me, it must have been connected with Papa’s death.” And I turn pale at the thought; a chill flush makes me clench all over. “It wasn’
t...you, was it? You didn’t kill Papa. Tell me it wasn’t you.”
“It wasn’t me. I don’t just take any contract they offer. Think of me as more of a fighter against wrongdoings, an anonymous means to settle a score that deserves to be settled. Like what happened to your father. That was a cold-blooded business decision. Valdez couldn’t stand being out-maneuvered in the market-place, so he made that choice to eliminate his rival. The preening shit was on holiday at the time, a watertight alibi, and of course there was no way to tie him to the killing. People like that are always six degrees removed from the act itself. Not a shred of evidence that would hold up in court.”
“Roger Stimson put it that exact same way,” I tell him. “He tried to talk me out of coming here, offered to hire someone for me. God, I wish I’d listened to him now. Roger was right all along. This is another world—a shadow world.”
“Who is he?”
“He's a really close friend of Papa’s. He came to see me shortly after the funeral, sat me down, put his arm round me—Roger’s always seemed like an old uncle—and he told me he’d found out beyond any doubt Valdez was responsible.”
“How did he find that out?”
“Don’t know. But I trust him completely. He’s gotten Papa out of so many scrapes over the years; he might as well be the family consigliore. But I told him I didn’t want anyone else doing this for me. Papa would have made sure he moved heaven and earth to avenge me personally, if I’d been killed; so I had to do the same. No, I wanted to do it. It’s the old Greek way, and it’s the