Barefoot With a Bodyguard (Barefoot Bay Undercover) (Volume 1)

  And have his hands all over her? What the hell did she think he was made of? “Bad idea,” he said, turning to return to his series of kicks.

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “Because—”

  “If you say ‘because I said so,’ you’ll be the one who needs to defend himself.”

  He almost smiled at the threat, because she was so stinking cute. But he’d never tell her that and expect to live.

  “Because…that’s not what I do or teach,” he said, firmly tugging his belt. “I’m almost done if you want to go get your coffee.”

  “And let me out of your sight?” she challenged.

  “I can see into the kitchen.”

  “I would like to be out of your sight permanently.”

  He inched back at the announcement, not surprised she’d made it, but taken aback by the way it affected him. But why should it? From day one, all she wanted to do was get away from him. Why would that change? One pretend kiss wouldn’t change that.

  “Sorry. I’m a fact of your life.” He shook out his arms and fired his foot straight out, keeping his leg parallel to the ground.

  “I’m serious. I want to learn self-defense.”

  “Maybe they have a class at the spa. You can take it. I’ll watch.”

  “Oh, sure, right after we study with the sex guru.”

  “It won’t work, Kate. You can’t learn enough to be on your own.”

  “Damn it!” She actually stomped her foot, and he expected her to charge toward her precious coffee, but she stayed right where she was, fury shooting from her eyes. “I hate to be dismissed. I hate to be ordered around. I hate that I can’t be on my own. And I hate…” Her voice faded out.

  “Me,” he finished for her.

  She sighed. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  “Yes, it was.” He locked his hands behind his head and stretched his biceps, leaning from side to side.

  “No.” She stared at his arms. “That is not what I was thinking I hated.”

  “I don’t believe you, and honestly, I don’t blame you.”

  Her reaction was half laugh, half choke. “You don’t get it, do you? You don’t…”

  He waited, but for once, her big-ass words didn’t come.

  “Just teach me a few moves to ward off the bad guys, Alec. Don’t you think that would be a good thing?”

  Good…for who? The basics of his sport required rolling on the floor, an arm, hand, and head between an opponent’s legs. When he taught jiu-jitsu, there wasn’t an inch of his student he didn’t touch…and that went both ways.

  “I don’t think that would be a wise or safe idea.” In fact, it would be a very, very dangerous idea. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can get really hurt. You’ll break your own arm instead of someone else’s.” He moved away, turning his head so he didn’t have to look at her expression, which he couldn’t read anyway.

  He whipped out his left leg, slicing the air and jumping to adjust his stance and do the other one. Just as he kicked out his right leg, she threw herself at it from the side, knocking him off-balance for one split second.

  Without thinking, he wrapped an arm around her waist, used his leg to fold hers in half, and took her to the ground as gently as he could so he didn’t crack her head or back on the bricks.

  The whole thing took less than two seconds and was sloppy and slow.

  He pinned her as if she were a rag doll, giant green eyes looking up at him with a flash of fear, then dancing with light.

  She laughed—laughed!—in his face. “See? I need work.”

  “You need”—not to feel this good under him—“common sense. That was stupid, Kate. I could’ve hurt you.”

  She pushed harder, with enough force to tighten her stomach and thigh muscles against him. She wasn’t strong, but she wasn’t soft, either. “Look, I just want to know how to fend off a bad guy.”

  “You run and scream. I’ll handle the fending.”

  “I don’t want you…for that.” She flinched as if she’d caught herself saying something she didn’t want to. “I want you to teach me how to…” She hesitated, silent and still, except for her gaze, which dropped to his mouth.

  Holy shit. He wanted to vault off her and let her go. He knew he should back away and brush her off. He had to do something to stop that crackling feeling, like there was a live wire tying them together.

  But he didn’t move.

  “How to protect myself,” she finished.

  From him.

  Very slowly, he pushed back, onto his knees, then up to a stand. She stayed right there on the ground, looking up at him. She was soft and sweet and beautiful and, God help him, she was attracted to him.

  The possibility of it hit him like an illegal punch to the head, concussion worthy.

  She lifted her hand for help, and he automatically reached for her, seeing his horribly, tattooed hand close over her slender, pale, flawless one. He stared at the mismatched pair, a slow sense of disbelief rolling over him.

  Attracted to him. Was that even possible?

  “Alec.” She barely whispered his name, making no effort to rise to her feet, looking up at him like…like she wanted him to come back down.

  And everything in his body—his brain, his heart, his gut and, oh, fuck, his dick—betrayed him by wanting to go right back there with her.

  Which would make him only slightly higher on the food chain than a slug. He gave a stronger pull, and she lifted a little bit.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  She frowned. “Can’t what? Lift me or teach me?”

  Touch you.

  He used enough force that she had no choice but to come to her feet, and he let go of her hand. “I shouldn’t teach you,” he said.

  “What if I paid you in some way?”

  He stared at her, not even sure there were any words to respond to that offer. She would pay him? For—

  “I mean, I know it’s your profession, so I don’t expect you to teach me for nothing. So how about a quid pro quo? You know, an exchange of favors.”

  Holy Christ, he knew what that one meant. “What kind of favors?”

  The palest shade of pink rose in her cheeks. “I could teach you something in return.”

  That sounded only slightly less indecent than some of the things that had gone through his mind when she was underneath him. “Like, what? How to read a contract?”

  “I could teach you…” She bit her lower lip. “Don’t take this the wrong way.”

  At this point, there really was no other way to take it. She was offering sex. To him. And, God help him, he was going to—

  “I could teach you words.”

  He nearly choked on the huge amount of his own stupidity he just swallowed. She wanted to teach him basic English, not sex. He must be imagining the attraction.

  He was the one who woke up hard as rebar and sweating in the middle of the night dreaming of her. That didn’t mean she—

  “You seem to be interested in words,” she added. “I’ll give you vocabulary-enrichment lessons in exchange for basic self-defense.” She added a sly smile and winked. “I’m a transcendent teacher, and you will be a meritorious student.”

  “No.”

  He saw the reaction in her eyes, fury, frustration, and a lot of old hurts welling up. And he knew why. Kate Kingston did not like to have someone make decisions for her.

  Well, too bad. This decision was made.

  “I don’t want to cross that barrier,” he added, as if that would soften the blow.

  It didn’t, at least not by the look on her face. She pivoted and went back into her room, slamming the door behind her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gabe checked his phone for the tenth time that hour. Mal’s call would be brief, monitored, and likely unsatisfying, but the fact that Gabe had been able to arrange it at all gave him hope that Drummand hadn’t been lying. Or Drummand was setting up Gabe in hopes that he’d say somet
hing that would land him in the same federal prison camp in Pennsylvania where Malcolm Harris currently resided.

  Still, if anyone could help him, it was Mal.

  His door burst open like a shot, revealing his grandfather wearing a scowl and holding a serving pan of some sort, two oven mitts covering his giant hands.

  “She stole my recipe.”

  Gabe yanked himself from his thoughts, a fiery resentment shooting through him. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

  “I wish I were!” He lumbered into the room and set the steaming hot pan on the edge of Gabe’s desk. He lifted the corner of tin foil to reveal something that looked and smelled like the very lasagna Gabe had been raised on. “Of course, she screwed up the sauce, but still. You don’t steal people’s recipes and change them with…with…oh my God, Gabriel, I think she put scotch bonnet peppers in this!”

  Gabe stared at him, utterly speechless and digging for the humor in the situation, which usually deflected his grandfather when he went batshit crazy.

  Nino dropped into the chair and ripped off the mitts, throwing them on the desk in a dramatic display of disgust. “I tell you true, she’s sitting on my last nerve.”

  “Getting,” Gabe corrected, knowing, at that moment, exactly how that expression got invented in the first place. Someone was definitely getting on his.

  “She took it into housekeeping!” he exclaimed. “With a little handwritten note that she’d made it for the staff from her mother’s secret recipe.” Nino made a mocking face with dramatic air quotes. “First of all, I assume her mother is from that island, and she’s no Napolitana. Who’s going to believe her mother made lasagna?”

  Gabe shoved into the depths of his very soul for some molecule of caring, but no. He didn’t care a fat fuck about food, and only the shreds of love for his grandfather kept him from howling. Instead, he looked at his phone and checked the time. Mal should have called by now.

  “What should I do?” Nino asked.

  “Stuff it up her ass? Those scotch bonnets would burn like a moth—”

  “Gabriel! I’m serious! Family recipes are like state secrets, and you don’t mess with them.”

  State secrets—exactly why Mal was in prison, he thought with one more demanding look at his phone. “Listen, Gramps, you gotta work this out with her. It’s food, it’s a recipe, it’s—”

  “You took it!” Poppy came lumbering in, her big brown eyes shooting sparks at Nino.

  “Of course I took it,” Nino said. “It’s not yours.”

  “Oh, really? You see that orange baking dish? It is mine.” The strength of her Jamaican accent directly correlated with how pissed off she was, and right now, Gabe could barely understand her.

  “You might have made it,” Nino said, standing up. “But you didn’t invent it.”

  “You didn’t invent lasagna!” Poppy fired back.

  “Shut the goddamn hell up, both of you.”

  They whipped around in unison, and Gabe shut his eyes when he realized those few words were going to cost him a lot.

  Gabe reached into his pocket, opened his wallet, and grabbed two twenties, stuffing them into the jar. “I’m covered for this because some doozies are about to roll out of my mouth one letter at a time until you”—he pointed to Nino—“and you”—his finger moved to Poppy—“get this shit”—he flipped his finger down at the lasagna—“under control.”

  “It’s not shit,” Nino said softly.

  “Then stop fighting like a couple of whiny-ass babies and work it the hell out.”

  They both blinked and stared at him.

  “But she—”

  Gabe glared at his grandfather, shutting him up.

  “I didn’t—” When he flattened Poppy with the same look, she had the good grace to sigh and hold up her hands. “Sorry to bring you into this, Mr. Gabriel.”

  Nino crossed his arms and breathed in and out so hard his nostrils quivered. “At least you could have the decency to admit you stole my recipe.”

  “I didn’t realize recipes were secret.”

  “You’ve never heard the expression ‘secret recipe’?” Nino asked, his voice full of sarcasm, which was rich for a man who butchered idioms with the same gusto he attacked a raw chicken. “You stole it from my recipe file.”

  “You left it on the counter in your kitchen.”

  “You shouldn’t have been in my kitchen.”

  “I’m the housekeeper.”

  “We don’t need—”

  “Stop!” Gabe’s shout brought them both to silence. After a beat, he dropped down in his chair. “I need you two to get along.”

  They said nothing.

  “Or one of you is going to be out of a job.”

  “Well, it won’t be me,” Nino said. “Blood is better than water.”

  “Thicker,” Gabe said. “And so are you.”

  “And I don’t technically work for you, Mr. Gabriel, so you can’t fire me,” Poppy chimed in. “I am on Miss Mandy’s payroll in housekeeping.”

  Gabe let out a sigh. “I might have to leave Barefoot Bay for a day or two.” That is, if Mal ever called and gave him anything to go on. “And I don’t want to come back to one of you charged for murder…or dead.” He gave them both hard looks. “Work it out, okay? Share the recipes and the food love.” Although he suspected this wasn’t at all about food. A clash of cultures, personalities, and two people who both worked for one man. Two people he needed very much.

  “I’ll try,” Poppy said.

  Nino nodded, his scowl firmly in place.

  “Now get this lasagna out of here and go eat it together.”

  “What?” Nino looked like Gabe had suggested they go down to the local fleabag and bang for days.

  “Without arguing,” Gabe added.

  But Poppy was already using the oven mitts to pick up the goods. “I think I’ll just take this over to our newlyweds and leave it in their fridge for dinner.”

  “I saw them last night,” Gabe said. “Making out on the beach.”

  Poppy nearly dropped the lasagna on the desk. “You must mean someone else, Mr. Gabriel.”

  Gabe laughed. “No, I mean them. I talked to them.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Fucker flipped me right on my ass. Sorry,” he said to Poppy. “I should still be covered with the jar, though.”

  She reprimanded him with a look, then shook her head. “Well, I was just over there to clean, and you could cut the tension in that villa with one of Nino’s overpriced, fancy knives.”

  Nino moaned. “They are not—”

  “Well, they weren’t tense last night,” Gabe said. “They were pretty cozy. And headed for a couples massage and an hour with the sex doctor, my sources tell me.”

  “Madame Valaina?” Poppy asked. “That’s not good.”

  “Why not?” Gabe asked.

  “Mr. Gabriel, they aren’t really married,” she said, so serious he almost laughed.

  “I know, Poppy. I set up the cover.”

  “Well, they can’t…you know.”

  “I’m sure they won’t.” Although, after the way they kissed last night, Gabe actually wasn’t sure of any such thing.

  “But, I don’t—” Her argument was cut off by the buzz of Gabe’s phone.

  “Thank Christ,” he mumbled, reaching for it.

  “Mr. Gabriel! My Lord and Savior costs ten dollars!” She pointed at the jar, and Gabe just glared at her.

  “I paid it with my arbitration skills. Now take the food, make nice, and get out.”

  Thankfully, they obeyed, and Gabe picked up the phone and heard the sound of his old friend’s hello. “Is it true?” he asked Mal.

  “It is. I’m getting out, but, you know, they’ll keep an eye on me.”

  More than one. So he couldn’t get into Cuba, either. But once he was out, they could talk freely, and Mal might know something. He hadn’t worked for the CIA or consulted for them, like Gabe, but he had a spy’s good instincts, and he knew shit. God, Mal
knew shit.

  And, best of all, they both still hated the same people: the ones who put him in prison on trumped-up charges. Sergeant Malcolm Harris hadn’t done anything wrong. On the contrary, he’d done everything right. But he and Gabe both had paid the price for being good guys. They both lost something. Mal lost a couple of years in prison and his reputation. And Gabe lost…

  Well, that was the point of everything, right? To find what he lost. And to get her back.

  “Good to hear your voice, Mal,” Gabe said. “I’m always thinking about the good old days.” He hoped that vague statement—and the fact that they both knew those days in Gitmo were anything but good—would clue him in.

  “Guess we left a few open doors behind us, though.” Mal’s voice was low, always cool, always husky. It matched his dark looks, his inky eyes, and hardened features.

  “As long as they’re open, dawg, and something decent is on the other side.”

  Mal was quiet for a long time. “Bet you’d like to know.”

  Yes, Mal, I would. “Some things we might never know.”

  “Then you need to get better information.”

  Gabe’s heart kicked up as he gripped the phone tighter. Yes, Malcolm I need better information. A direction. A town. A name. Hope and a plan. Mostly hope.

  His need for all those things was what had sent him to this sandy little hellhole that was closer to another sandy little hellhole where he couldn’t go.

  “Then you should hit the news.”

  There was something on the news? Plenty of current events and buzz about the changing status of Cuba, and Gabe had watched everything. Every single stream of video content had been combed and culled, but none of it gave him what he wanted. “I watch a lot of it,” he said.

  “Try listening instead.”

  Oh, yeah, the big guy had some impressive covert convo skills, because that was real information.

  “Anything in particular you think I’d like?”

  “Well, here in the country club, we don’t exactly get satellite radio,” he said, just enough emphasis on the last word for Gabe to know it was important.