Tall, Dark and Fearless

CHAPTER EIGHT

“IS THOMAS REALLY a king?”

Mia looked up from the sand castle she was helping Tasha build. The little girl was making dribble turrets on the side of the large mound using wet sand and water from a plastic pail that Mia had found in her closet. She had remarkable dexterity for a five-year-old, and managed to make most of her dribbles quite tall and spiky.

“Thomas’s last name is King,” Mia answered. “But here in the United States, we don’t have kings and queens.”

“Is he a king somewhere else? Like I’m a princess in Russia?”

“Well,” Mia said diplomatically, “you might want to check with Thomas, but I think King is just his last name.”

“He looks like a king.” Natasha giggled. “He thinks I’m from Mars. I’m gonna marry him.”

“Marry who?” Frisco asked, sitting down in the sand next to them.

He’d just come out of the ocean, and water beaded on his eyelashes and dripped from his hair. He looked more relaxed and at ease than Mia had ever seen him.

“Thomas,” Tasha told him, completely serious.

“Thomas.” Frisco considered that thoughtfully. “I like him,” he said. “But you’re a little young to be getting married, don’t you think?”

“Not now, silly,” she said with exasperation. “When I’m a grown-up, of course.”

Frisco tried to hide his smile. “Of course,” he said.

“You can’t marry my mom ’cause you’re her brother, right?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Frisco told her. He leaned back in the sand on his elbows. Mia tried not to stare at the way the muscles in his arms flexed as they supported his weight. She tried to pull her gaze away from his broad shoulders and powerful chest and smooth, tanned skin. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen him without a shirt, after all. She should be getting used to this….

“Too bad,” Tash said with a sigh. “Mommy’s always looking for someone to marry, and I like you.”

Frisco’s voice was husky. “Thanks, Tash. I like you, too.”

“I didn’t like Dwayne,” the little girl said. “He scared me, but Mommy liked living in his house.”

“Maybe when your mom comes back, the two of you could live a few doors down from me,” Frisco said.

“You could marry Mia,” Tasha suggested. “And move in with her. And we could live in your place.”

Mia glanced up. Frisco met her eyes, clearly embarrassed. “Maybe Mia doesn’t want to get married,” he said.

“Do you?” the little girl asked, looking up from her handiwork to gaze at Mia with those pure blue eyes that were so like Frisco’s.

“Well,” she said carefully. “Someday I’d like to get married and have a family, but—”

“She does,” Tasha informed her uncle. “She’s pretty and she makes good sandwiches. You should ask her to marry you.” She stood up and, taking her bucket, went down to the edge of the water, where she began to chase waves up the sand.

“I’m sorry about that,” Frisco said with a nervous laugh. “She’s…you know, five. She’s heavily into happily ever after.”

“It’s all right,” Mia said with a smile. “And don’t worry. I won’t hold you to any promises that Tasha makes on your behalf.” She brushed the sand from her knees and moved back onto the beach blanket she’d spread out.

Frisco moved to join her. “That’s good to know.” He turned to look at Mia, his warm gaze skimming up her legs, lingering on her red two-piece bathing suit and the enormous amount of skin it exposed, before settling on her face. “She’s right, though. You are pretty, and you make damn good sandwiches.”

Mia’s pulse was racing. When had it started to matter so much whether or not this man thought that she was pretty? When had the urge disappeared—the urge to cover herself up with a bulky T-shirt every time he looked at her with that heat in his eyes? When had her heart started to leap at his crooked, funny smiles? When had he crossed that boundary that defined him as more than a mere friend?

It had started days ago, with that very first hug he had given Natasha in the courtyard. He was so gentle with the child, so patient. Mia’s attraction to him had been there from the start, yet now that she had come to know more of him, it was multilayered, existing on more complicated levels than just basic, raw sexual magnetism.

It was crazy. Mia knew it was crazy. This was not a man with whom she could picture herself spending the rest of her life. He’d been trained as a killer—a professional soldier. And if that wasn’t enough, he had barrels of anger and frustration and pain to work through before he could be considered psychologically and emotionally healthy. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the fact of his drinking.

Yes, he’d vowed to stop, but Mia’s experience as a high school teacher had made her an expert on the disease of alcoholism. The best way to fight it was not to face it alone, but to seek help. He seemed hell-bent on handling it himself, and more often than not, such a course would end in failure.

No, if she were smart, she’d pack up her beach bag right now and get the heck out of there.

Instead, she put more sunblock on her face. “I went into your kitchen to help Natasha load the cooler with soda,” she said. “And I noticed you had only one thing stuck onto your refrigerator. A list.”

He glanced at her, his expression one of wariness. “Yeah?”

“I wasn’t sure,” she said, “but…it looked like it might’ve been a list of things that you have difficulty doing with your injured knee.”

The list had included things like run, jump, skydive, bike, and climb stairs.

He gazed out at the ocean, squinting slightly in the brightness. “That’s right.”

“You forgot to include that you’re no longer able to play on the Olympic basketball team, so I added that to the bottom,” she said, her tongue firmly in her cheek.

He let loose a short burst of air that might’ve been called a laugh if he’d been smiling. “Very funny. If you’d looked carefully, you’d have noticed that the word walk was at the top. I crossed it off when I could walk. I intend to do the same with the rest of those things on that list.”

His eyes were the same fierce shade of blue as the sky.

Mia rolled onto her stomach and propped her chin up in her hands. “Tell me about this amazing pink couch,” she said. “What’s that all about?”

This time Frisco did laugh, and the lines around his eyes crinkled with genuine amusement. He stretched out next to her on the blanket, making sure he could still see Tasha from where they lay. “Oh, that,” he said. “It’s gonna look great in my living room, don’t you think? Dirt brown and ugly green go real well with pink and silver.”

Mia smiled. “You’ll have to redecorate. Maybe a white carpet and lots of Art Deco type mirrors on the walls would work.”

“And it would be so me,” he said, deadpan.

“Seriously, though,” Mia said. “If anything will give Tasha incentive to follow your rules, that will. She’s only mentioned it five thousand times today already.”

“Tell me the truth,” Frisco said, supporting his head with one hand as he gazed at her. “Did I go too far? Did I cross the line from positive reinforcement into sheer bribery?”

Mia shook her head, caught in the intense blue of his eyes. “You’re giving her the opportunity to earn something that she truly wants, along with learning an important lesson about following rules. That’s not bribery.”

“I feel like I’m taking the point and heading into totally uncharted territory,” Frisco admitted.

Mia didn’t understand. “Taking the point…?”

“If you take the point, if you’re the pointman,” he explained, “that means you lead the squad. You’re the first guy out there—the first guy either to locate or step on any booby traps or land mines. It’s a pretty intense job.”

“At least you know that Natasha’s not suddenly going to explode.”

Frisco smiled. “Are you sure about that?”

With amusement dancing in his eyes, a smile softening his face and the ocean breeze gently ruffling his hair, Frisco looked like the kind of man Mia would go far out of her way to meet. He looked charming and friendly and pleasant and sinfully handsome.

“You’re doing a wonderful job with Tasha,” she told him. “You’re being remarkably consistent in dealing with her. I know how hard it is not to lose your temper when she disobeys you—I’ve seen you swallow it, and I know that’s not easy. And giving her that medal—that was brilliant.” She sat up, reaching for the T-shirt Tasha had been wearing over her bathing suit. “Look.” She held it up so he could see. “She’s so proud of that medal, she asked me to pin it onto this shirt for her so she could wear it to the beach. If you keep this up, it’s only a matter of time before she’ll remember to follow your rules.”

Frisco had rolled over onto his back and was shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun with one hand as he looked up at her. He sat up now, in one smooth effortless motion, glancing back at Natasha, checking briefly to be sure the little girl was safe.

She was crouched in the sand halfway between the blanket and the water, starting a new dribble castle.

“I’m doing a wonderful job and I’m brilliant?” he said with a half smile. “Sounds like you’re giving me a little positive reinforcement here.”

Natasha’s T-shirt was damp and Mia spread it out on top of the cooler to dry in the sun. “Well…maybe,” she admitted with a sheepish smile.

He touched her gently under her chin, pulling her head up so that she was forced to look at him.

His smile had faded, and the amusement in his eyes was gone, replaced by something else entirely, something hot and dangerous and impossible to turn away from.

“I like my positive reinforcement delivered a little differently,” he told her, his voice no more than a husky whisper.

His gaze flickered down to her mouth, then up again to meet her eyes, and Mia knew that he was going to kiss her. He leaned forward slowly, giving her plenty of time to back away. But she didn’t move. She couldn’t move. Or maybe she just plain didn’t want to move.

She felt him sigh as his lips met hers. His mouth was warm and sweet, and he kissed her so softly. He touched her lips gently with his tongue, waiting until she granted him access before he deepened the kiss. And even then, even as she opened herself to him, he kissed her breathtakingly tenderly.

It was the sweetest kiss she’d ever shared.

He pulled back to look into her eyes, and she could feel her heart pounding. But then he smiled, one of his beautiful, heart-stoppingly perfect crooked smiles, as if he’d just found gold at the end of a rainbow. And this time she reached for him, wrapping her arms up around his neck, pressing herself against him, stabbing her fingers up into the incredible softness of his hair as she kissed him again.

This time it was pure fire. This time he touched her with more than just his lips, pulling her even harder against his chest, running his hands along the bare skin of her back, through her hair, down her arms as he met her tongue in a kiss of wild, bone-melting intensity.

“Frisco! Frisco! The ice-cream truck is here! Can I get an ice cream?”

Mia pushed Frisco away from her even as he released her. He was breathing as hard as she was, and he looked thoroughly shaken. But Natasha was oblivious to everything but the ice-cream truck that had pulled into the beach parking lot.

“Please, please, please, please, please,” she was saying, running in circles around and around the beach blanket.

Frisco looked up toward the end of the beach, where the ice-cream truck was parked, and then back at Mia. He looked as shocked and as stunned as she felt. “Uh,” he said. He leaned toward her and spoke quickly, in a low voice. “Can you take her? I can’t.”

“Of course.” She quickly pulled on her T-shirt. God, her hands were shaking. She glanced up at him. “Is your knee all right?”

He dug a five-dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it to her with a weak grin. “Actually, it has nothing to do with my knee.”

Suddenly Mia understood. She felt her cheeks heat with a blush. “Come on, Tasha,” she said, pulling her hair out from the collar of her T-shirt as she led the little girl up the beach.

What had she just done?

She’d just experienced both the sweetest and the most arousing kisses of her entire life—with a man she’d vowed to stay away from. Mia stood in line with Tasha at the ice-cream truck, trying to figure out her next move.

Getting involved with Frisco was entirely out of the question. But, oh, those kisses… Mia closed her eyes. Mistake, she told herself over and over. She’d already made the mistake—to continue in this direction would be sheer foolishness. So okay. He was an amazing mixture of sweetness and sexiness. But he was a man who needed saving, and she knew better than to think she could save him. To become involved would only pull her under, too. Only he could save himself from his unhappiness and despair, and only time would tell if he’d succeed.

She’d have to be honest with him. She’d have to make sure he understood.

In a fog, she ordered Tasha’s ice cream and two ice bars for herself and Frisco. The trek back to the blanket seemed endlessly long. The sand seemed hotter than before and her feet burned. Tasha went back to her sand castle, ice cream dripping down her chin.

Frisco was sitting on the edge of the blanket, soaking wet, as if he’d thrown himself into the ocean to cool down. That was good. Mia wanted him cooled down, didn’t she?

She handed him the ice pop and tried to smile as she sat down. “I figured we could all use something to cool us off, but you beat me to it.”

Frisco looked at Mia, sitting as far from him as she possibly could on the beach blanket, and then down at the ice bar in his hands. “I kind of liked the heat we were generating,” he said quietly.

Mia shook her head, unable even to look him in the eye. “I have to be honest. I hardly even know you and…”

He stayed silent, just waiting for her to go on.

“I don’t think we should… I mean, I think it would be a mistake to…” She was blushing again.

“Okay.” Frisco nodded. “That’s okay. I…I understand.” He couldn’t blame her. How could he blame her? She wasn’t the type who went for short-term ecstasy. If she played the game, it would be for keeps, and face it, he wasn’t a keeper. He was not the kind of man Mia would want to be saddled with for the rest of her life. She was so full of life, and he was forced to move so slowly. She was so complete; he was less than whole.

“I should probably get home,” she said, starting to gather up her things.

“We’ll walk you back,” he said quietly.

“Oh, no—you don’t have to.”

“Yeah, we do, okay?”

She glanced up at him, and something she saw in his eyes or on his face made her know not to argue. “All right.”

Frisco stood up, reaching for his cane. “Come on, Tash, let’s go into the water one last time and wash that ice cream off your face.”

He tossed the unopened ice pop into a garbage can as he walked Natasha down to the ocean. He stared out at the water and tried his damnedest not to think about Mia as Tasha rinsed the last of her ice cream from her face and hands. But he couldn’t do it. He could still taste her, still feel her in his arms, still smell her spicy perfume.

And for those moments that he’d kissed her, for those incredible few minutes that she’d been in his arms, for the first time since the last dose of heavy-duty pain medication had worn off five years ago, he’d actually forgotten about his injured knee.

NATASHA DIDN’T SEEM to notice the awkward silence. She chattered on, to Mia, to Frisco, to no one in particular. She sang snatches of songs and chanted bits of rhymes.

Mia felt miserable. Rejection was never fun, from either the giving or the receiving end. She knew she’d hurt Frisco by backing away. But her worst mistake had been to let him kiss her in the first place.

She wished she’d insisted that they take her car to the beach, rather than walk. Frisco was a master at hiding his pain, but she could tell from the subtle changes in the way he held himself and the way he breathed that he was hurting.

Mia closed her eyes briefly, trying not to care, but she couldn’t. She did care. She cared far too much.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured to Frisco as Natasha skipped ahead of them, hopping over the cracks in the sidewalk.

He turned and looked at her with those piercing blue eyes that seemed to see right through to her very soul. “You really are, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said quietly.

“Frisco!” Natasha launched herself at him, nearly knocking him over.

“Whoa!” he said, catching her in his left arm while he used his right to balance both of their weight with his cane. “What’s wrong, Tash?”

The little girl had both of her arms wrapped tightly around his waist, and she was hiding her face in his T-shirt.

“Tash, what’s going on?” Frisco asked again, but she didn’t move. Short of yanking the child away from himself, he couldn’t get her to release him.

Mia crouched down next to the little girl. “Natasha, did something scare you?”

She nodded yes.

Mia pushed Tasha’s red curls back from her face. “Honey, what scared you?”

Tasha lifted her head, looking at Mia with tear-filled eyes. “Dwayne,” she whispered. “I saw Dwayne.”

Mia looked up at Frisco, frowning her confusion. “Who…?”

“One of Sharon’s old boyfriends.” He pulled Natasha up and into his arms. “Tash, you probably just saw someone who reminded you of him.”

Natasha shook her head emphatically as Mia stood up. “I saw Dwayne,” she said again, tears overflowing onto her cheeks and great gulping sobs making her nearly impossible to understand. “I saw him.”

“What would he be doing here in San Felipe?” Frisco asked the little girl.

“He’d be looking for Sharon Francisco,” a low voice drawled. “That’s what he’d be doing here.”

Natasha was suddenly, instantly silent.

Mia gazed at the man standing directly in front of them. He was a big man, taller and wider even than Frisco, but softer and heavily overweight. He was wearing a dark business suit that had to have been hand tailored to fit his girth, and lizard-skin boots that were buffed to a gleaming shine. His shirt was dark gray—a slightly lighter shade of the same black of his suit, and his tie was a color that fell somewhere between the two. His hair was thick and dark, and it tumbled forward into his eyes in a style reminiscent of Elvis Presley. His face was fifty pounds too heavy to be called handsome, with a distinctive hawklike nose and deep-set eyes that were now lost among the puffiness of his excess flesh.

In one big, beefy hand, he held a switchblade knife that he opened and closed, opened and closed, with a rhythmic hiss of metal on metal.

“My sister’s not here,” Frisco said evenly.

Mia felt him touch her shoulder, and she turned toward him. His eyes never left Dwayne and the knife in the man’s right hand as he handed her Natasha. “Get behind me,” he murmured. “And start backing away.”

“I can see that your sister’s not here,” the heavy man had a thick New Orleans accent. The gentlemanly old South politeness of his speech somehow made him seem all the more frightening. “But since you have the pleasure of her daughter’s company, I must assume you know of her whereabouts.”

“Why don’t you leave me your phone number,” Frisco suggested, “and I’ll have her call you.”

Dwayne flicked his knife open again, and this time he didn’t close it. “I’m afraid that’s unacceptable. You see, she owes me a great deal of money.” He smiled. “Of course, I could always take the child as collateral….”

Frisco could still sense Mia’s presence behind him. He heard her sharp intake of breath. “Mia, take Tash into the deli on the corner and call the police,” he told her without turning around.

He felt her hesitation and anxiety, felt the coolness of her fingers as she touched his arm. “Alan…”

“Do it,” he said sharply.

Mia began backing away. Her heart was pounding as she watched Frisco smile pleasantly at Dwayne, always keeping his eyes on that knife. “You know I’d die before I’d let you even touch the girl,” the former SEAL said matter-of-factly. Mia knew that what he said was true. She prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

“Why don’t you just tell me where Sharon is?” Dwayne asked. “I’m not interested in beating the hell out of a poor, pathetic cripple, but I will if I have to.”

“The same way you had to hit a five-year-old?” Frisco countered. Everything about him—his stance, his face, the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice—was deadly. Despite the cane in his hand, despite his injured knee, he looked anything but poor and pathetic.

But Dwayne had a knife, and Frisco only had his cane—which he needed to use to support himself.

Dwayne lunged at Frisco, and Mia turned and ran for the deli.

Frisco saw Mia’s sudden movement from the corner of his eye. Thank God. It would be ten times easier to fight this enormous son of a bitch knowing that Mia and Tash were safe and out of the way.

Dwayne lunged with the knife again, and Frisco sidestepped him, gritting his teeth against the sudden screaming pain as his knee was forced to twist and turn in ways that it no longer could. He used his cane and struck the heavyset man on the wrist, sending the sharp-bladed knife skittering into the street.

He realized far too late that he had played right into Dwayne’s hand. With his cane up and in the air, he couldn’t use it to support himself. And Dwayne came at him again, spinning and turning with the graceful agility of a much smaller, lighter man. Frisco watched, almost in slow motion, as his opponent aimed a powerful karate kick directly at his injured knee.

He saw it coming, but as if he, too, were caught in slow motion, he couldn’t move out of the way.

And then there was only pain. Sheer, blinding, excruciating pain. Frisco felt a hoarse cry rip from his throat as he went down, hard, onto the sidewalk. He fought the darkness that threatened to close in on him as he felt Dwayne’s foot connect violently with his side, this time damn near launching him into the air.

Somehow he held on to the heavy man’s leg. Somehow he brought his own legs up and around, twisting and kicking and tripping, until Dwayne, too, fell onto the ground.

There were no rules. One of Dwayne’s elbows landed squarely in Frisco’s face, and he felt his nose gush with blood. He struggled to keep the bigger man’s weight off of him, trying to keep Dwayne pinned as he hit him in the face again and again.