Dear Reader,

I’m always glad when one of my older romances get reissued—those books are out of print, and tend to be very hard to find. In fact, I frequently get e-mail from readers telling me they’ve bought one of these books at auction online—for four or five times the original cover price! (With someone’s ancient lunch glued between pages 23 and 24…)

So I really love it when my books are reissued—I’m twice as happy when they’re packaged, like this, in a fabulous 2-in-1 format!

The book you’re holding includes two stories from my Tall, Dark and Dangerous series about U.S. Navy SEAL Team Ten. I originally conceived of this series as a trilogy, but it quickly grew to eleven installments—all first published by Silhouette Books.

The stories in Tall, Dark and Fearless are two of my favorites—Frisco’s Kid and Everyday, Average Jones.

Two more of my favorites—Harvard’s Education and Hawken’s Heart—will be available next month in Tall, Dark and Devastating. (And okay, let’s face it—all of the books in my Tall, Dark and Dangerous series are personal faves! I just love those Navy SEALs….)

Visit www.eHarlequin.com or my Web site, www.SuzanneBrockmann.com, for more information about upcoming releases and reissues!

Happy reading,

Suz Brockmann

Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author
SUZANNE BROCKMANN

“Zingy dialogue, a great sense of drama and a pair of lovers who generate enough steam heat to power a whole city.”

—RT Book Reviews on Hero Under Cover

“Brockmann deftly delivers another testosterone-drenched, adrenaline-fueled tale of danger and desire that brilliantly combines superbly crafted, realistically complex characters with white-knuckle plotting.”

—Booklist on Force of Nature

“Readers will be on the edge of their seats.”

—Library Journal on Breaking Point

“Another excellently paced, action-filled read. Brockmann delivers yet again!”

—RT Book Reviews on Into the Storm

“Funny, sexy, suspenseful and superb.”

—Booklist on Hot Target

“Sizzling with military intrigue and sexual tension, with characters so vivid they leap right off the page, Gone Too Far is a bold, brassy read with a momentum that just doesn’t quit.”

—New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen

“An unusual and compelling romance.”

—Affaire de Coeur on No Ordinary Man

“Sensational sizzle, powerful emotion and sheer fun.”

—RT Book Reviews on Body Language

Suzanne Brockmann
Tall, Dark and Fearless

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

FRISCO'S KID

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EVERYDAY, AVERAGE JONES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

FRISCO’S KID

For my cousin, Elise Kramer, who played with and loved my mother, then me and now my children, too, as if we were her own kids.

With all my love, Elise, this one’s for you.

CHAPTER ONE

FRISCO’S KNEE WAS on fire.

He had to lean heavily on his cane to get from the shower to the room he shared with three other vets, and still his leg hurt like hell with every step he took.

But pain was no big deal. Pain had been part of Navy Lt. Alan “Frisco” Francisco’s everyday life since his leg had damn near been blown off more than five years ago during a covert rescue operation. The pain he could handle.

It was this cane that he couldn’t stand.

It was the fact that his knee wouldn’t—couldn’t—support his full weight or fully extend that made him crazy.

It was a warm California day, so he pulled on a pair of shorts, well aware that they wouldn’t hide the raw, ugly scars on his knee.

His latest surgery had been attempted only a few months ago. They’d cut him open all over again, trying, like Humpty Dumpty, to put all the pieces back together. After the required hospital stay, he’d been sent here, to this physical therapy center, to build up strength in his leg, and to see if the operation had worked—to see if he had more flexibility in his injured joint.

But his doctor had been no more successful than the legendary King’s horses and King’s men. The operation hadn’t improved Frisco’s knee. His doctor couldn’t put Frisco together again.

There was a knock on the door, and it opened a crack.

“Yo, Frisco, you in here?”

It was Lt. Joe Catalanotto, the commander of SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad—the squad to which, an aeon of pain and frustration and crushed hopes ago, Frisco had once belonged.

“Where else would I be?” Frisco said.

He saw Joe react to his bitter words, saw the bigger man’s jaw tighten as he came into the room, closing the door behind him. He could see the look in Joe’s dark eyes—a look of wary reserve. Frisco had always been the optimist of Alpha Squad. His attitude had always been upbeat and friendly. Wherever they went, Frisco had been out in the street, making friends with the locals. He’d been the first one smiling, the man who’d make jokes before a high-altitude parachute jump, relieving the tension, making everyone laugh.

But Frisco wasn’t laughing now. He’d stopped laughing five years ago, when the doctors had walked into his hospital room and told him his leg would never be the same. He’d never walk again.

At first he’d approached it with the same upbeat, optimistic attitude he’d always had. He’d never walk again? Wanna make a bet? He was going to do more than walk again. He was going to bring himself back to active duty as a SEAL. He was going to run and jump and dive. No question.

It had taken years of intense focus, operations and physical therapy. He’d been bounced back and forth from hospitals to physical therapy centers to hospitals and back again. He’d fought long and hard, and he could walk again.

But he couldn’t run. He could do little more than limp along with his cane—and his doctors warned him against doing too much of that. His knee couldn’t support his weight, they told him. The pain that he stoically ignored was a warning signal. If he wasn’t careful, he’d lose what little use he did have of his leg.

And that wasn’t good enough.

Because until he could run, he couldn’t be a SEAL again.

Five years of disappointment and frustration and failure had worn at Frisco’s optimism and upbeat attitude. Five years of itching to return to the excitement of his life as a Navy SEAL; of being placed into temporary retirement with no real, honest hope of being put back into active duty; of watching as Alpha Squad replaced him—replaced him; of shuffling along when he burned to run. All those years had worn him down. He wasn’t upbeat anymore. He was depressed. And frustrated. And angry as hell.

Joe Catalanotto didn’t bother to answer Frisco’s question. His hawklike gaze took in Frisco’s well-muscled body, lingering for a moment on the scars on his leg. “You look good,” Joe said. “You’re keeping in shape. That’s good. That’s real good.”

“Is this a social call?” Frisco asked bluntly.

“Partly,” Joe said. His rugged face relaxed into a smile. “I’ve got some good news I wanted to share with you.”

Good news. Damn, when was the last time Frisco had gotten good news?

One of Frisco’s roommates, stretched out on his bed, glanced up from the book he was reading.

Joe didn’t seem to mind. His smile just got broader. “Ronnie’s pregnant,” he said. “We’re going to have a kid.”

“No way.” Frisco couldn’t help smiling. It felt odd, unnatural. It had been too long since he’d used those muscles in his face. Five years ago, he’d have been pounding Joe on the back, cracking ribald jokes about masculinity and procreation and laughing like a damn fool. But now the best he could muster up was a smile. He held out his hand and clasped Joe’s in a handshake of congratulations. “I’ll be damned. Who would’ve ever thought you’d become a family man? Are you terrified?”

Joe grinned. “I’m actually okay about it. Ronnie’s the one who’s scared to death. She’s reading every book she can get her hands on about pregnancy and babies. I think the books are scaring her even more.”

“God, a kid,” Frisco said again. “You going to call him Joe Cat, Junior?”

“I want a girl,” Joe admitted. His smile softened. “A redhead, like her mother.”

“So what’s the other part?” Frisco asked. At Joe’s blank look, he added, “You said this was partly a social call. That means it’s also partly something else. Why else are you here?”

“Oh. Yeah. Steve Horowitz called me and asked me to come sit in while he talked to you.”

Frisco slipped on a T-shirt, instantly wary. Steve Horowitz was his doctor. Why would his doctor want Joe around when he talked to Frisco? “What about?”

Joe wouldn’t say, but his smile faded. “There’s an officer’s lounge at the end of the hall,” he said. “Steve said he’d meet us there.”

A talk in the officer’s lounge. This was even more serious than Frisco had guessed. “All right,” he said evenly. It was pointless to pressure Joe. Frisco knew his former commander wouldn’t tell him a thing until Steve showed up.

“How’s the knee?” Joe asked as they headed down the corridor. He purposely kept his pace slow and easy so that Frisco could keep up.

Frisco felt a familiar surge of frustration. He hated the fact that he couldn’t move quickly. Damn, he used to break the sprint records during physical training.

“It’s feeling better today,” he lied. Every step he took hurt like hell. The really stupid thing was that Joe knew damn well how much pain he was in.

He pushed open the door to the officer’s lounge. It was a pleasant enough room, with big, overstuffed furniture and a huge picture window overlooking the gardens. The carpet was a slightly lighter shade of blue than the sky, and the green of the furniture upholstery matched the abundant life growing outside the window. The colors surprised him. Most of the time Frisco had spent in here was late at night, when he couldn’t sleep. In the shadowy darkness, the walls and furniture had looked gray.

Steven Horowitz came into the room, a step behind them. “Good,” he said in his brisk, efficient manner. “Good, you’re here.” He nodded to Joe. “Thank you, Lieutenant, for coming by. I know your schedule’s heavy, too.”

“Not too heavy for this, Captain,” Joe said evenly.

“What exactly is ‘this’?” Frisco asked. He hadn’t felt this uneasy since he’d last gone out on a sneak-and-peek—an information-gathering expedition behind enemy lines.

The doctor gestured to the couch. “Why don’t we sit down?”

“I’ll stand, thanks.” Frisco had sat long enough during those first few years after he’d been injured. He’d spent far too much time in a wheelchair. If he had his choice, he’d never sit again.

Joe made himself comfortable on the couch, his long legs sprawled out in front of him. The doctor perched on the edge of an armchair, his body language announcing that he wasn’t intending to stay long.

“You’re not going to be happy about this,” Horowitz said bluntly to Frisco, “but yesterday I signed papers releasing you from this facility.”

Frisco couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You did what?”

“You’re out of here,” the doctor said, not unkindly. “As of fourteen hundred hours today.”

Frisco looked from the doctor to Joe and back. Joe’s eyes were dark with unhappiness, but he didn’t contradict the doctor’s words. “But my physical therapy sessions—”

“Have ended,” Horowitz said. “You’ve regained sufficient use of your knee and—”

“Sufficient for what?” Frisco asked, outraged. “For hobbling around? That’s not good enough, dammit! I need to be able to run. I need to be able to—”

Joe sat up. “Steve told me he’s been watching your chart for weeks,” the commander of Alpha Squad told Frisco quietly. “Apparently, there’s been no improvement—”

“So I’m in a temporary slump. It happens in this kind of—”

“Your therapist has expressed concern that you’re overdoing it.” Horowitz interrupted him. “You’re pushing yourself too hard.”

“Cut the crap.” Frisco’s knuckles were white as he gripped his cane. “My time is up. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” He looked back at Joe. “Someone upstairs decided that I’ve had my share of the benefits. Someone upstairs wants my bed emptied, so that it can be filled by some other poor son of a bitch who has no real hope of a full recovery, right?”

“Yeah, they want your bed,” Joe said, nodding. “That’s certainly part of it. There’s limited bed space in every VA facility. You know that.”

“Your progress has begun to decline,” the doctor added. “I’ve told you this before, but you haven’t seemed to catch on. Pain is a signal from your body to your brain telling you that something is wrong. When your knee hurts, that does not mean push harder. It means back off. Sit down. Give yourself a break. If you keep abusing yourself this way, Lieutenant, you’ll be back in a wheelchair by August.”

“I’ll never be back in a wheelchair. Sir.” Frisco said the word sir, but his tone and attitude said an entirely different, far-less-flattering word.

“If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life sitting down, then you better stop punishing a severely injured joint,” Dr. Horowitz snapped. He sighed, taking a deep breath and lowering his voice again. “Look, Alan, I don’t want to fight with you. Why can’t you just be grateful for the fact that you can stand? You can walk. Sure, it’s with a cane, but—”

“I’m going to run,” Frisco said. “I’m not going to give up until I can run.”

“You can’t run,” Steven Horowitz said bluntly. “Your knee won’t support your weight—it won’t even properly extend. The best you’ll manage is an awkward hop.”

“Then I need another operation.”

“What you need is to get on with your life.”

“My life requires an ability to run,” Frisco said hotly. “I don’t know too many active-duty SEALs hobbling around with a cane. Do you?”

Dr. Horowitz shook his head, looking to Joe for help.

But Joe didn’t say a word.

“You’ve been in and out of hospitals and PT centers for five years,” the doctor told Frisco. “You’re not a kid in your twenties anymore, Alan. The truth is, the SEALs don’t need you. They’ve got kids coming up from BUD/S training who could run circles around you even if you could run. Do you really think the top brass are going to want some old guy with a bum knee to come back?”

Frisco carefully kept his face expressionless. “Thanks a lot, man,” he said tightly as he gazed sightlessly out of the window. “I appreciate your vote of confidence.”

Joe shifted in his seat. “What Steve’s saying is harsh—and not entirely true,” he said. “Us ‘old guys’ in our thirties have experience that the new kids lack, and that usually makes us better SEALs. But he’s right about something—you have been out of the picture for half a decade. You’ve got more to overcome than the physical challenge—as if that weren’t enough. You’ve got to catch up with the technology, relearn changed policies…”

“Give yourself a break,” Dr. Horowitz urged again.

Frisco turned his head and looked directly at the doctor. “No,” he said. He looked at Joe, too. “No breaks. Not until I can walk without this cane. Not until I can run a six-minute mile again.”

The doctor rolled his eyes in exasperation, standing up and starting for the door. “A six-minute mile? Forget it. It’s not going to happen.”

Frisco looked out the window again. “Captain, you also said I’d never walk again.”

Horowitz turned back. “This is different, Lieutenant. The truth—whether you believe it or not—is that the kind of physical exertion you’ve been up to is now doing your knee more damage than good.”

Frisco didn’t turn around. He stood silently, watching bright pink flowers move gently in the breeze.

“There are other things you can do as a SEAL,” the doctor said more gently. “There are office jobs—”

Frisco spun around, his temper exploding. “I’m an expert in ten different fields of warfare, and you want me to be some kind of damn pencil pusher?”

“Alan—”

Joe stood up. “You’ve at least got to take some time and think about your options,” he said. “Don’t say no until you think it through.”

Frisco gazed at Joe in barely disguised horror. Five years ago they’d joked about getting injured and being sucked into the administrative staff. It was a fate worse than death, or so they’d agreed. “You want me to think about jockeying a desk?” he said.

“You could teach.”

Frisco shook his head in disbelief. “That’s just perfect, man. Can’t you just see me writing on a blackboard…?” He shook his head in disgust. “I would’ve expected you of all people to understand why I could never do that.”

“You’d still be a SEAL,” Joe persisted. “It’s that or accept your retirement as permanent. Someone’s got to teach these new kids how to survive. Why can’t you do it?”

“Because I’ve been in the middle of action,” Frisco nearly shouted. “I know what it’s like. I want to go back there, I want to be there. I want to be doing, not…teaching. Damn!”

“The Navy doesn’t want to lose you,” Joe said, his voice low and intense. “It’s been five years, and there’s still been nobody in the units who can touch you when it comes to strategic warfare. Sure, you can quit. You can spend the rest of your life trying to get back what you once had. You can lock yourself away and feel sorry for yourself. Or you can help pass your knowledge on to the next generation of SEALs.”

“Quit?” Frisco said. He laughed, but there was no humor in it at all. “I can’t quit—because I’ve already been kicked out. Right, Captain Horowitz? As of fourteen hundred hours, I’m outta here.”

There was silence then—silence that settled around them all, heavy and still and thick.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor finally said. “I’ve got to do what is best for you and for this facility. We need to use your bed for someone who really could use it. You need to give your knee a rest before you damage it further. The obvious solution was to send you home. Someday you’ll thank me for this.” The door clicked as it closed behind him.

Frisco looked at Joe. “You can tell the Navy that I’m not going to accept anything short of active duty,” he said bluntly. “I’m not going to teach.”

There was compassion and regret in the bigger man’s dark eyes. “I’m sorry,” Joe said quietly.

Frisco glared up at the clock that was set into the wall. It was nearly noon. Two more hours, and he’d have to pack up his things and leave. Two more hours, and he wouldn’t be a Navy SEAL, temporarily off the active duty list, recovering from a serious injury. In two hours he’d be former Navy SEAL Lt. Alan Francisco. In two hours, he’d be a civilian, with nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Anger hit him hard in the gut. Five years ago, it was a sensation he’d rarely felt. He’d been calm, he’d been cool. But nowadays, he rarely felt anything besides anger.

But wait. He did have somewhere to go. The anger eased up a bit. Frisco had kept up the payments on his little condo in San Felipe, the low-rent town outside of the naval base. But…once he arrived in San Felipe, then what? He would, indeed, have nothing to do.

Nothing to do was worse than nowhere to go. What was he going to do? Sit around all day, watching TV and collecting disability checks? The anger was back, this time lodging in his throat, choking him.

“I can’t afford to continue the kind of physical therapy I’ve been doing here at the hospital,” Frisco said, trying to keep his desperation from sounding in his voice.

“Maybe you should listen to Steve,” Joe said, “and give your leg a rest.”

Easy for Joe to say. Joe was going to stand up and walk out of this hospital without a cane, without a limp, without his entire life shattered. Joe was going to go back to the home he shared with his beautiful wife—who was pregnant with their first child. He was going to have dinner with Veronica, and later he’d probably make love to her and fall asleep with her in his arms. And in the morning, Joe was going to get up, go for a run, shower, shave and get dressed, and go into work as the commanding officer of SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad.

Joe had everything.

Frisco had an empty condo in a bad part of town.

“Congratulations about the baby, man,” Frisco said, trying as hard as he could to actually mean it. Then he limped out of the room.

CHAPTER TWO

THERE WAS A LIGHT on in condo 2C.

Mia Summerton stopped in the parking lot, her arms straining from the weight of her grocery bags, and looked up at the window of the second-floor condo that was next to her own. Apartment 2C had remained empty and dark for so many years, Mia had started to believe that its owner would never come home.

But that owner—whoever he was—was home tonight.

Mia knew that the owner of 2C was, indeed, a “he.” She got a better grip on the handles of her cloth bags and started for the outside cement stairs that led up to the second story and her own condo. His name was Lt. Alan Francisco, U.S.N., Ret. She’d seen his name in the condo association owner’s directory, and on the scattered pieces of junk mail that made it past the post office’s forwarding system.

As far as Mia could figure out, her closest neighbor was a retired naval officer. With no more than his name and rank to go on, she had left the rest to her imagination. He was probably an older man, maybe even elderly. He had possibly served during the Second World War. Or perhaps he’d seen action in Korea or Vietnam.

Whatever the case, Mia was eager to meet him. Next September, her tenth graders were going to be studying American history, from the stock market crash through to the end of the Vietnam conflict. With any luck, Lt. Alan Francisco, U.S.N., Ret., would be willing to come in and talk to her class, tell his story, bring the war he’d served in down to a personal level.

And that was the problem with studying war. Until it could be understood on a personal level, it couldn’t be understood at all.

Mia unlocked her own condo and carried her groceries inside, closing the door behind her with her foot. She quickly put the food away and stored her cloth grocery bags in the tiny broom closet. She glanced at herself in the mirror and adjusted and straightened the high ponytail that held her long, dark hair off her neck.

Then she went back outside, onto the open-air corridor that connected all of the second-floor units in the complex.

The figures on the door, 2C, were slightly rusted, but they still managed to reflect the floodlights from the courtyard, even through the screen. Not allowing herself time to feel nervous or shy, Mia pressed the doorbell.

She heard the buzzer inside of the apartment. The living room curtains were open and the light was on inside, so she peeked in.

Architecturally, it was the mirror image of her own unit. A small living room connected to a tiny dining area, which turned a corner and connected to a galley kitchen. Another short hallway led back from the living room to two small bedrooms and a bath. It was exactly the same as her place, except the layout of the rooms faced the opposite direction.

His furniture was an exact opposite of Mia’s, too. Mia had decorated her living room with bamboo and airy, light colors. Lieutenant Francisco’s was filled with faintly shabby-looking mismatched pieces of dark furniture. His couch was a dark green plaid, and the slipcovers were fraying badly. His carpeting was the same forest green that Mia’s had been when she’d first moved in, three years ago. She’d replaced hers immediately.

Mia rang the bell again. Still no answer. She opened the screen and knocked loudly on the door, thinking if Lieutenant Francisco was an elderly man, he might be hard of hearing….

“Looking for someone in particular?”

Mia spun around, startled, and the screen door banged shut, but there was no one behind her.

“I’m down here.”

The voice carried up from the courtyard, and sure enough, there was a man standing in the shadows. Mia moved to the railing.

“I’m looking for Lieutenant Francisco,” she said.

He stepped forward, into the light. “Well, aren’t you lucky? You found him.”

Mia was staring. She knew she was staring, but she couldn’t help herself.

Lt. Alan Francisco, U.S.N., Ret., was no elderly, little man. He was only slightly older than she was—in his early thirties at the most. He was young and tall and built like a tank. The sleeveless shirt he was wearing revealed muscular shoulders and arms, and did very little to cover his powerful-looking chest.

His hair was dark blond and cut short, in an almost boxlike military style. His jaw was square, too, his features rugged and harshly, commandingly handsome. Mia couldn’t see what color his eyes were—only that they were intense, and that he examined her as carefully as she studied him.

He took another step forward, and Mia realized he limped and leaned heavily on a cane.

“Did you want something besides a look at me?” he asked.

His legs were still in the shadows, but his arms were in the light. And he had tattoos. One on each arm. An anchor on one arm, and something that looked like it might be a mermaid on the other. Mia pulled her gaze back to his face.

“I, um…” she said. “I just…wanted to say…hi. I’m Mia Summerton. We’re next-door neighbors,” she added lamely. Wow, she sounded like one of her teenage students—tongue-tied and shy.

It was more than his rugged good looks that was making her sound like a space cadet. It was because Lt. Alan Francisco was a career military man. Despite his lack of uniform, he was standing there in front of her, shoulders back, head held high—the Navy version of G.I. Joe. He was a warrior not by draft but by choice. He’d chosen to enlist. He’d chosen to perpetuate everything Mia’s antiwar parents had taught her to believe was wrong.

He was still watching her as closely as she’d looked at him. “You were curious,” he said. His voice was deep and accentless. He didn’t speak particularly loudly, but his words carried up to her quite clearly.

Mia forced a smile. “Of course.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. He didn’t smile back. In fact, he hadn’t smiled once since she’d turned to look over the railing at him. “I’m not loud. I don’t throw wild parties. I won’t disturb you. I’ll stay out of your way and I hope you’ll have the courtesy to do the same.”

He nodded at her, just once, and Mia realized that she’d been dismissed. With a single nod, he’d just dismissed her as if she were one of his enlisted troops.

As Mia watched, the former Navy lieutenant headed toward the stairs. He used his cane, supporting much of his weight with it. And every step he took looked to be filled with pain. Was he honestly going to climb those stairs…?

But of course he was. This condo complex wasn’t equipped with elevators or escalators or anything that would provide second-floor accessibility to the physically challenged. And this man was clearly challenged.

But Lieutenant Francisco pulled himself up, one painful step at a time. He used the cast-iron railing and his upper-body strength to support his bad leg, virtually hopping up the stairs. Still, Mia could tell that each jarring movement caused him no little amount of pain. When he got to the top, he was breathing hard, and there was a sheen of sweat on his face.

Mia spoke from her heart as usual, not stopping to think first. “There’s a condo for sale on the ground floor,” she said. “Maybe the association office can arrange for you to exchange your unit for the…one on the…”

The look he gave her was withering. “You still here?” His voice was rough and his words rude. But as he looked up again, as for one brief moment he glanced into her eyes, Mia could see myriad emotions in his gaze. Anger. Despair. Shame. An incredible amount of shame.

Mia’s heart was in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, her gaze dropping almost involuntarily to his injured leg. “I didn’t mean to—”

He moved directly underneath one of the corridor lights, and held up his right leg slightly. “Pretty, huh?” he said.

His knee was a virtual railroad switching track of scars. The joint itself looked swollen and sore. Mia swallowed. “What—” she said, then cleared her throat. “What…happened…?”

His eyes were an odd shade of blue, she realized, gazing up into the swirl of color. They were dark blue, almost black. And they were surrounded by the longest, thickest eyelashes she’d ever seen on a man.

Up close, even despite the shine of perspiration on his face, Mia had to believe that Lt. Alan Francisco was the single most attractive man she had ever seen in her entire twenty-seven years.

His hair was dark blond. Not average, dirty blond, but rather a shiny mixture of light brown with streaks and flashes of gold and even hints of red that gleamed in the light. His nose was big, but not too big for his face, and slightly crooked. His mouth was wide. Mia longed to see him smile. What a smile this man would have, with a generous mouth like that. There were laugh lines at the corners of his mouth and his eyes, but they were taut now with pain and anger.

“I was wounded,” he said brusquely. “During a military op.”

He had been drinking. He was close enough for Mia to smell whiskey on his breath. She moved back a step. “Military…op?”

“Operation,” he said.

“That must have been…awful,” she said. “But…I wasn’t aware that the United States has been involved in any naval battles recently. I mean, someone like, oh, say…the President would let us all know if we were at war, wouldn’t he?”

“I was wounded during a search-and-rescue counterterrorist operation in downtown Baghdad,” Francisco said.

“Isn’t Baghdad a little bit inland for a sailor?”

“I’m a Navy SEAL,” he said. Then his lips twisted into a grim version of a smile. “Was a Navy SEAL,” he corrected himself.

Frisco realized that she didn’t know what he meant. She was looking up at him with puzzlement in her odd-colored eyes. They were a light shade of brown and green—hazel, he thought it was called—with a dark brown ring encircling the edges of her irises. Her eyes had a slightly exotic tilt to them, as if somewhere, perhaps back in her grandparents’ generation, there was Asian or Polynesian blood. Hawaiian. That was it. She looked faintly Hawaiian. Her cheekbones were wide and high, adding to the exotic effect. Her nose was small and delicate, as were her graceful-looking lips. Her skin was smooth and clear and a delicious shade of tan. Her long, straight black hair was up in a ponytail, a light fringe of bangs softening her face. Her hair was so long that if she wore it down it would hang all the way to her hips.

His next-door neighbor was strikingly beautiful.

She was nearly an entire twelve inches shorter than he was, with a slender build. She was wearing a loose-fitting T-shirt and a pair of baggy shorts. Her shapely legs were that same light shade of brown and her feet were bare. Her figure was slight, almost boyish. Almost. Her breasts may have been small, but they swelled slightly beneath the cotton of her shirt in a way that was decidedly feminine.

At first glance, from the way she dressed and from her clean, fresh beauty, Frisco had thought she was a kid, a teenager. But up close, he could see faint lines of life on her face, along with a confidence and wisdom that no mere teenager could possibly exude. Despite her youthful appearance, this Mia Summerton was probably closer to his own age.

“Navy SEALs,” he explained, still gazing into her remarkable hazel eyes, “are the U.S. military’s most elite special operations group. We operate on sea, in the air and on land. SEa, Air, Land. SEAL.”

“I get it,” she said with a smile. “Very cute.”

Her smile was crooked and made her look just a little bit goofy. Surely she knew that her smile marred her perfect beauty, but that didn’t keep her from smiling. In fact, Frisco was willing to bet that, goofy or not, a smile was this woman’s default expression. Still, her smile was uncertain, as if she wasn’t quite sure he deserved to be smiled at. She was ill at ease—whether that was caused by his injury or his imposing height, he didn’t know. She was wary of him, however.

“‘Cute’ isn’t a word used often to describe a special operations unit.”

“Special operations,” Mia repeated. “Is that kind of like the Green Berets or the Commandos?”

“Kind of,” Frisco told her, watching her eyes as he spoke. “Only, smarter and stronger and tougher. SEALs are qualified experts in a number of fields. We’re all sharpshooters, we’re all demolitions experts—both underwater and on land—we can fly or drive or sail any jet or plane or tank or boat. We all have expert status in using the latest military technology.”

“It sounds to me as if you’re an expert at making war.” Mia’s goofy smile had faded, taking with it much of the warmth in her eyes. “A professional soldier.”

Frisco nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.” She didn’t like soldiers. That was her deal. It was funny. Some women went for military men in a very major way. At the same time, others went out of their way to keep their distance. This Mia Summerton clearly fell into the second category.

“What do you do when there’s no war to fight? Start one of your own?”

Her words were purposely antagonistic, and Frisco felt himself bristle. He didn’t have to defend himself or his former profession to this girl, no matter how pretty she was. He’d run into plenty of her type before. It was politically correct these days to be a pacifist, to support demilitarization, to support limiting funds for defense—without knowing the least little thing about the current world situation.

Not that Frisco had anything against pacifists. He truly believed in the power of negotiation and peace talks. But he followed the old adage: walk softly and carry a big stick. And the Navy SEALs were the biggest, toughest stick America could hope to carry.

And as for war, they were currently fighting a great big one—an ongoing war against terrorism.

“I don’t need your crap.” Frisco turned away as he used his cane to limp toward the door of his condo.

“Oh, my opinion is crap?” She moved in front of him, blocking his way. Her eyes flashed with green fire. “What I do need is another drink,” Frisco announced. “Badly. So if you don’t mind moving out of my way…?”

Mia crossed her arms and didn’t budge. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I confess that my question may have sounded a bit hostile, but I don’t believe that it was crap.”

Frisco gazed at her steadily. “I’m not in the mood for an argument,” he said. “You want to come in and have a drink—please. Be my guest. I’ll even find an extra glass. You want to spend the night—even better. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared my bed. But I have no intention of standing here arguing with you.”

Mia flushed, but her gaze didn’t drop. She didn’t look away. “Intimidation is a powerful weapon, isn’t it?” she said. “But I know what you’re doing, so it won’t work. I’m not intimidated, Lieutenant.”

He stepped forward, moving well into her personal space, backing her up against the closed door. “How about now?” he asked. “Now are you intimidated?”

She wasn’t. He could see it in her eyes. She was angrier, though.

“How typical,” she said. “When psychological attack doesn’t work, resort to the threat of physical violence.” She smiled at him sweetly. “I’m calling your bluff, G.I. Joe. What are you going to do now?”

Frisco gazed down into Mia’s oval-shaped face, out of ideas, although he’d never admit that to her. She was supposed to have turned and run away by now. But she hadn’t. Instead, she was still here, glaring up at him, her nose mere inches from his own.

She smelled amazingly good. She was wearing perfume—something light and delicate, with the faintest hint of exotic spices.

Something had stirred within him when she’d first given him one of her funny smiles. It stirred again and he recognized the sensation. Desire. Man, it had been a long time….

“What if I’m not bluffing?” Frisco said, his voice no more than a whisper. He was standing close enough for his breath to move several wisps of her hair. “What if I really do want you to come inside? Spend the night?”

He saw a flash of uncertainty in her eyes. And then she stepped out of his way, moving deftly around his cane. “Sorry, I’m not in the mood for casual sex with a jerk,” she retorted.

Frisco unlocked his door. He should have kissed her. She’d damn near dared him to. But it had seemed wrong. Kissing her would have been going too far. But, Lord, he’d wanted to….

He turned to look back at her before he went inside. “If you change your mind, just let me know.”

Mia laughed and disappeared into her own apartment.

CHAPTER THREE

“YEAH?” FRISCO RASPED into the telephone. His mouth was dry and his head was pounding as if he’d been hit by a sledgehammer. His alarm clock read 9:36, and there was sunlight streaming in underneath the bedroom curtains. It was bright, cutting like a laser beam into his brain. He closed his eyes.

“Alan, is that you?”

Sharon. It was his sister, Sharon.

Frisco rolled over, searching for something, anything with which to wet his impossibly dry mouth. There was a whiskey bottle on the bedside table with about a half an inch of amber liquid still inside. He reached for it, but stopped. No way was he going to take a slug of that. Hell, that was what his old man used to do. He’d start the day off with a shot—and end it sprawled, drunk, on the living room couch.

“I need your help,” Sharon said. “I need a favor. The VA hospital said you were released and I just couldn’t believe how lucky my timing was.”

“How big a favor?” Frisco mumbled. She was asking for money. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. His older sister Sharon was as big a drunk as their father had been. She couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t pay her rent, couldn’t support her five-year-old daughter, Natasha.

Frisco shook his head. He’d been there when Tasha was born, brought into the world, the offspring of an unknown father and an irresponsible mother. As much as Frisco loved his sister, he knew damn well that Sharon was irresponsible. She floated through life, drifting from job to job, from town to town, from man to man. Having a baby daughter hadn’t rooted Sharon in any one place.

Five years ago, back when Natasha was born, back before his leg had damn near been blown off, Frisco had been an optimist. But even he hadn’t been able to imagine much happiness in the baby’s future. Unless Sharon owned up to the fact that she had a drinking problem, unless she got help, sought counseling and finally settled down, he’d known that little Natasha’s life would be filled with chaos and disruption and endless change.

He’d been right about that.

For the past five years, Frisco had sent his sister money every month, hoping to hell that she used it to pay her rent, hoping Natasha had a roof over her head and food to fill her stomach.

Sharon had visited him only occasionally while he was in the VA hospital. She only came when she needed money, and she never brought Natasha with her—the one person in the world Frisco would truly have wanted to see.

“This one’s a major favor,” Sharon said. Her voice broke. “Look, I’m a couple of blocks away. I’m gonna come over, okay? Meet me in the courtyard in about three minutes. I broke my foot, and I’m on crutches. I can’t handle the stairs.”

She hung up before giving Frisco a chance to answer. Sharon broke her foot. Perfect. Why was it that people with hard luck just kept getting more and more of the same? Frisco rolled over, dropped the receiver back onto the phone, grabbed his cane and staggered into the bathroom.

Three minutes. It wasn’t enough time to shower, but man, he needed a shower badly. Frisco turned on the cold water in the bathroom sink and then put his head under the faucet, both drinking and letting the water flow over his face.

Damn, he hadn’t meant to kill that entire bottle of whiskey last night. During the more than five years he’d been in and out of the hospital and housed in rehabilitation centers, he’d never had more than an occasional drink or two. Even before his injury, he was careful not to drink too much. Some of the guys went out at night and slammed home quantities of beer and whiskey—enough to float a ship. But Frisco rarely did. He didn’t want to be like his father and his sister, and he knew enough about it to know that alcoholism could be hereditary.

And last night? He’d meant to have one more drink. That was all. Just one more to round down the edges. One more to soften the harsh slap of his release from the therapy center. But one drink had turned into two.

Then he’d started thinking about Mia Summerton, separated from him by only one very thin wall, and two had become three. He could hear the sound of her stereo. She was listening to Bonnie Raitt. Every so often, Mia would sing along, her voice a clear soprano over Bonnie’s smoky alto. And after three drinks, Frisco had lost count.

He kept hearing Mia’s laughter, echoing in his head, the way she’d laughed at him right before she’d gone into her own condo. It had been laughter loaded with meaning. It had been “a cold day in hell” kind of laughter, as in, it would be a cold day in hell before she’d even deign to so much as think about him again.

That was good. That was exactly what he wanted. Wasn’t it?

Yes. Frisco splashed more water on his face, trying to convince himself that that was true. He didn’t want some neighbor lady hanging around, giving him those goddamned pitying looks as he hobbled up and down the stairs. He didn’t need suggestions about moving to a lousy ground-floor condo as if he were some kind of cripple. He didn’t need self-righteous soapbox speeches about how war is not healthy for children and other living things. If anyone should know that, he sure as hell should.

He’d been in places where bombs were falling. And, yes, the bombs had military targets. But that didn’t mean if a bomb accidentally went off track, it would fail to explode. Even if it hit a house or a church or a school, it was gonna go off. Bombs had no conscience, no remorse. They fell. They exploded. They destroyed and killed. And no matter how hard the people who aimed those bombs tried, civilians ended up dead.

But if a team of SEALs was sent in before air strikes became necessary, those SEALs could conceivably achieve more with fewer casualties. A seven-man team of SEALs such as the Alpha Squad could go in and totally foul up the enemy’s communication system. Or they could kidnap the enemy’s military leader, ensuring chaos and possibly reopening negotiations and peace talks.

But more often than not, because the top brass failed to realize the SEALs’ full potential, they weren’t utilized until it was too late.

And then people died. Children died.

Frisco brushed his teeth, then drank more water. He dried his face and limped back into his bedroom. He searched for his sunglasses to no avail, uncovered his checkbook, pulled on a clean T-shirt and, wincing at the bright sunlight, he headed outside.

THE WOMAN IN the courtyard burst into tears.

Startled, Mia looked up from her garden. She’d seen this woman walk in—a battered, worn-out-looking blonde on crutches, awkwardly carrying a suitcase, followed by a very little, very frightened red-haired girl.

Mia followed the weeping woman’s gaze and saw Lieutenant Francisco painfully making his way down the stairs. Wow, he looked awful. His skin had a grayish cast, and he was squinting as if the brilliant blue California sky and bright sunshine were the devil’s evil doing. He hadn’t shaved, and the stubble on his face made him look as if he’d just been rolled from a park bench. His T-shirt looked clean, but his shorts were the same ones he’d had on last night. Clearly he’d slept in them.

He’d obviously had “another” drink last night, and quite probably more than that afterward.

Fabulous. Mia forced her attention back to the flowers she was weeding. She had been convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lt. Alan Francisco was not the kind of man she even wanted to have for a friend. He was rude and unhappy and quite possibly dangerous. And now she knew that he drank way too much, too.

No, she was going to ignore condo 2C from now on. She would pretend that the owner was still out of town.

The blond woman dropped her crutches and wrapped her arms around Francisco’s neck. “I’m sorry,” she kept saying, “I’m sorry.”

The SEAL led the blonde to the bench directly across from Mia’s garden plot. His voice carried clearly across the courtyard—she couldn’t help but overhear, even though she tried desperately to mind her own business.

“Start at the beginning,” he said, holding the woman’s hands. “Sharon, tell me what happened. From the beginning.”

“I totaled my car,” the blonde—Sharon—said, and began to cry again.

“When?” Francisco asked patiently.

“Day before yesterday.”

“That was when you broke your foot?”

She nodded. Yes.

“Was anyone else hurt?”

Her voice shook. “The other driver is still in the hospital. If he dies, I’ll be up on charges of vehicular manslaughter.”

Francisco swore. “Shar, if he dies, he’ll be dead. That’s a little bit worse than where you’ll be, don’t you think?”

Blond head bowed, Sharon nodded.

“You were DUI.” It wasn’t a question, but she nodded again. DUI—driving under the influence. Driving drunk.

A shadow fell across her flowers, and Mia looked up to see the little red-haired girl standing beside her.

“Hi,” Mia said.

The girl was around five. Kindergarten age. She had amazing strawberry-blond hair that curled in a wild mass around her round face. Her face was covered with freckles, and her eyes were the same pure shade of dark blue as Alan Francisco’s.

This had to be his daughter. Mia’s gaze traveled back to the blonde. That meant Sharon was his…wife? Ex-wife? Girlfriend?

It didn’t matter. What did she care if Alan Francisco had a dozen wives?

The red-haired girl spoke. “I have a garden at home. Back in the old country.”

“Which old country is that?” Mia asked with a smile. Kindergarten-age children were so wonderful.

“Russia,” the little girl said, all seriousness. “My real father is a Russian prince.” Her real father, hmm? Mia couldn’t blame the little girl for making up a fictional family. With a mother up on DUI charges, and a father who was only a step or two behind…Mia could see the benefits of having a pretend world to escape to, filled with palaces and princes and beautiful gardens.

“Do you want to help me weed?” Mia asked.

The little girl glanced over at her mother.

“The bottom line is that I have no more options,” Sharon was tearfully telling Alan Francisco. “If I voluntarily enter the detox program, I’ll win points with the judge who tries my case. But I need to find someplace for Natasha to stay.”

“No way,” the Navy lieutenant said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. There’s no way in hell I can take her.”

“Alan, please, you’ve got to help me out here!”

His voice got louder. “What do I know about taking care of a kid?”

“She’s quiet,” Sharon pleaded. “She won’t get in the way.”

“I don’t want her.” Francisco had lowered his voice, but it still carried clearly over to Mia. And to the little girl—to Natasha.

Mia’s heart broke for the child. What an awful thing to overhear: Her own father didn’t want her.

“I’m a teacher,” Mia said to the girl, hoping she wouldn’t hear the rest of her parents’ tense conversation. “I teach older children—high school kids.”

Natasha nodded, her face a picture of concentration as she imitated Mia and gently pulled weeds from the soft earth of the garden.

“I’m supposed to go into detox in an hour,” Sharon said. “If you don’t take her, she’ll be a ward of the state—she’ll be put into foster care, Alan.”

“There’s a man who works for my father the prince,” Natasha told Mia, as if she, too, were trying desperately not to listen to the other conversation, “who only plants flowers. That’s all he does all day. Red flowers like these. And yellow flowers.”

On the other side of the courtyard, Mia could hear Alan Francisco cursing. His voice was low, and she couldn’t quite make out the words, but it was clear he was calling upon his full sailor’s salty vocabulary. He wasn’t angry at Sharon—his words weren’t directed at her, but rather at the cloudless California sky above them.

“My very favorites are the blue flowers,” Mia told Natasha. “They’re called morning glories. You have to wake up very early in the morning to see them. They close up tightly during the day.”

Natasha nodded, still so serious. “Because the bright sun gives them a headache.”

“Natasha!”

The little girl looked up at the sound of her mother’s voice. Mia looked up, too—directly into Alan Francisco’s dark blue eyes. She quickly lowered her gaze, afraid he’d correctly read the accusations she knew were there. How could he ignore his own child? What kind of man could admit that he didn’t want his daughter around?

“You’re going to be staying here, with Alan, for a while,” Sharon said, smiling tremulously at her daughter.

He’d given in. The former special operations lieutenant had given in. Mia didn’t know whether to be glad for the little girl, or concerned. This child needed more than this man could give her. Mia risked another look up, and found his disturbingly blue eyes still watching her.

“Won’t that be fun?” Sharon hopefully asked Natasha.

The little girl considered the question thoughtfully. “No,” she finally said.

Alan Francisco laughed. Mia hadn’t thought him capable, but he actually smiled and snorted with laughter, covering it quickly with a cough. When he looked up again, he wasn’t smiling, but she could swear she saw amusement in his eyes.

“I want to go with you,” Natasha told her mother, a trace of panic in her voice. “Why can’t I go with you?”

Sharon’s lip trembled, as if she were the child. “Because you can’t,” she said ineffectively. “Not this time.”

The little girl’s gaze shifted to Alan and then quickly back to Sharon. “Do we know him?” she asked.

“Yes,” Sharon told her. “Of course we know him. He’s your uncle Alan. You remember Alan. He’s in the Navy…?”

But the little girl shook her head.

“I’m your mom’s brother,” Alan said to the little girl.

Her brother. Alan was Sharon’s brother. Not her husband. Mia didn’t want to feel anything at that news. She refused to feel relieved. She refused to feel, period. She weeded her garden, pretending she couldn’t hear any of the words being spoken.

Natasha gazed at her mother. “Will you come back?” she asked in a very small voice.

Mia closed her eyes. But she did feel. She felt for this little girl; she felt her fear and pain. Her heart ached for the mother, too, God help her. And she felt for blue-eyed Alan Francisco. But what she felt for him, she couldn’t begin to define.

“I always do,” Sharon said, dissolving once more into tears as she enveloped the little girl in a hug. “Don’t I?” But then she quickly set Natasha aside. “I’ve got to go. Be good. I love you.” She turned to Alan. “The address of the detox center is in the suitcase.”

Alan nodded, and with a creak of her crutches, Sharon hurried away.

Natasha stared expressionlessly after her mother, watching until the woman disappeared from view. Then, with only a very slight tightening of her lips, she turned to look at Alan.

Mia looked at him, too, but this time his gaze never left the little girl. All of the amusement was gone from his eyes, leaving only sadness and compassion.

All of his anger had vanished. All of the rage that seemed to burn endlessly within him was temporarily doused. His blue eyes were no longer icy—instead they seemed almost warm. His chiseled features looked softer, too, as he tried to smile at Natasha. He may not have wanted her—he’d said as much—but now that she was here, it seemed as if he were going to do his best to make things easier for her.

Mia looked up to see that the little girl’s eyes had filled with tears. She was trying awfully hard not to cry, but one tear finally escaped, rolling down her face. She wiped at it fiercely, fighting the flood.

“I know you don’t remember me,” Alan said to Natasha, his voice impossibly gentle. “But we met five years ago. On January 4.”

Natasha all but stopped breathing. “That’s my birthday,” she said, gazing across the courtyard at him.

Alan’s forced smile became genuine. “I know,” he said. “I was driving your mom to the hospital and…” He broke off, looking closely at her. “You want a hug?” he asked. “Because I could really use a hug right now, and I’d sure appreciate it if you could give me one.”

Natasha considered his words, then nodded. She slowly crossed to him.

“You better hold your breath, though,” Alan told her ruefully. “I think I smell bad.”

She nodded again, then carefully climbed onto his lap. Mia tried not to watch, but it was nearly impossible not to look at the big man, with his arms wrapped so tentatively around the little girl, as if he were afraid she might break. But when Natasha’s arms went up and locked securely around his neck, Alan closed his eyes, holding the little girl more tightly.

Mia had thought his request for a hug had been purely for Natasha’s sake, but now she had to wonder. With all of his anger and his bitterness over his injured leg, it was possible Alan Francisco hadn’t let anyone close enough to give him the warmth and comfort of a hug in quite some time. And everyone needed warmth and comfort—even big, tough professional soldiers.

Mia looked away, trying to concentrate on weeding her last row of flowers. But she couldn’t help but overhear Natasha say, “You don’t smell bad. You smell like Mommy—when she wakes up.”

Alan didn’t look happy with that comparison. “Terrific,” he murmured.

“She’s grouchy in the morning,” Natasha said. “Are you grouchy in the morning, too?”

“These days I’m afraid I’m grouchy all the time,” he admitted.

Natasha was quiet for a moment, considering that. “Then I’ll keep the TV turned down really quiet so it doesn’t bother you.”

Alan laughed again, just a brief exhale of air. Still, it drew Mia’s eyes to his face. When he smiled, he transformed. When he smiled, despite the pallor of his skin and his heavy stubble and his uncombed hair, he became breathtakingly handsome.

“That’s probably a good idea,” he said.

Natasha didn’t get off his lap. “I don’t remember meeting you before,” she said.

“You wouldn’t,” Alan said. He shifted painfully. Even Natasha’s slight weight was too much for his injured knee, and he moved her so that she was sitting on his good leg. “When we first met, you were still inside your mom’s belly. You decided that you wanted to be born, and you didn’t want to wait. You decided you wanted to come into the world in the front seat of my truck.”

“Really?” Natasha was fascinated.

Alan nodded. “Really. You came out before the ambulance could get there. You were in such a hurry, I had to catch you and hold on to you to keep you from running a lap around the block.”

“Babies can’t run,” the little girl scoffed.

“Maybe not regular babies,” Alan said. “But you came out doing the tango, smoking a cigar and hollering at everybody. Oh, baby, were you loud.”

Natasha giggled. “Really?”

“Really,” Alan said. “Not the tango and the cigar, but the loud. Come on,” he added, lifting her off his lap. “Grab your suitcase and I’ll give you the nickel tour of my condo. You can do…something…while I take a shower. Man, do I need a shower.”

Natasha tried to pick up her suitcase, but it was too heavy for her. She tried dragging it after her uncle, but she was never going to get it up the stairs. When Alan turned back to see her struggle, he stopped.

“I better get that,” he said. But even as he spoke, a change came over his face. The anger was back. Anger and frustration.

Mia was only one thought behind him, and she realized almost instantly that Alan Francisco was not going to be able to carry Natasha’s suitcase up the stairs. With one hand on his cane, and the other pulling himself up on the cast-iron railing, it wasn’t going to happen.

She stood up, brushing the dirt from her hands. However she did this, it was going to be humiliating for him. And, as with all painful things, it was probably best to do it quickly—to get it over with.

“I’ll get that,” she said cheerfully, taking the suitcase out of Natasha’s hand. Mia didn’t wait for Alan to speak or react. She swept up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and set the suitcase down outside the door to 2C.

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” she called out as she went into her own apartment and grabbed her watering can.

She was outside again in an instant, and as she started down the stairs, she saw that Alan hadn’t moved. Only the expression on his face had changed. His eyes were even darker and angrier and his face was positively stormy. His mouth was tight. All signs of his earlier smile were gone.

“I didn’t ask for your help,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.

“I know,” Mia said honestly, stopping several steps from the bottom so she could look at him, eye to eye. “I figured you wouldn’t ask. And if I asked, I knew you would get all mad and you wouldn’t let me help. This way, you can get as mad as you want, but the suitcase is already upstairs.” She smiled at him. “So go on. Get mad. Knock yourself out.”

As Mia turned and headed back to her garden, she could feel Alan’s eyes boring into her back. His expression hadn’t changed—he was mad. Mad at her, mad at the world.

She knew she shouldn’t have helped him. She should have simply let him deal with his problems, let him work things out. She knew she shouldn’t get entangled with someone who was obviously in need.

But Mia couldn’t forget the smile that had transformed Alan into a real human being instead of this rocky pillar of anger that he seemed to be most of the time. She couldn’t forget the gentle way he’d talked to the little girl, trying his best to set her at ease. And she couldn’t forget the look on his face when little Natasha had given him a hug.

Mia couldn’t forget—even though she knew that she’d be better off if she could.

CHAPTER FOUR

FRISCO STARTED TO open the bathroom door, but on second thought stopped and wrapped his towel around his waist first.

He could hear the sound of the television in the living room as he leaned heavily on his cane and went into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

A kid. What the hell was he going to do with a kid for the next six weeks?

He tossed his cane on the unmade bed and rubbed his wet hair with his towel. Of course, it wasn’t as if his work schedule were overcrowded. He’d surely be able to squeeze Natasha in somewhere between “Good Morning, America” and the “Late Show with David Letterman.”

Still, little kids required certain specific attention—like food at regular intervals, baths every now and then, a good night’s sleep that didn’t start at four in the morning and stretch all the way out past noon. Frisco could barely even provide those things for himself, let alone someone else.

Hopping on his good leg, he dug through his still-packed duffel bag, searching for clean underwear. Nothing.

It had been years since he’d had to cook for himself. His kitchen skills were more geared toward knowing which cleaning solutions made the best flammable substances when combined with other household products.

He moved to his dresser, and found only a pair of silk boxers that a lady friend had bought him a lifetime ago. He pulled on his bathing suit instead.

There was nothing to eat in his refrigerator besides a lemon and a six-pack of Mexican beer. His kitchen cabinets contained only shakers of moisture-solidified salt and pepper and an ancient bottle of tabasco sauce.

The second bedroom in his condo was nearly as bare as his cabinets. It had no furniture, only several rows of boxes neatly stacked along one wall. Tasha was going to have to crash on the couch until Frisco could get her a bed and whatever other kind of furniture a five-year-old girl needed.

Frisco pulled on a fresh T-shirt, throwing the clothes he’d been wearing onto the enormous and ever-expanding pile of dirty laundry in the corner of the room…some of it dating from the last time he’d been here, over five years ago. Even the cleaning lady who’d come in yesterday afternoon hadn’t dared to touch it.

They’d kicked him out of the physical therapy center before laundry day. He’d arrived here yesterday with two bags of gear and an enormous duffel bag filled with dirty laundry. Somehow he was going to have to figure out a way to get his dirty clothes down to the laundry room on the first floor—and his clean clothes back up again.

But the first thing he had to do was make sure his collection of weapons were all safely locked up. Frisco didn’t know much about five-year-olds, but he was certain of one thing—they didn’t mix well with firearms.

He quickly combed his hair and, reaching for the smooth wood of his cane, he headed toward the sound of the TV. After he secured his private arsenal, he and Tasha would hobble on down to the grocery store on the corner and pick up some chow for lunch and…

On the television screen, a row of topless dancers gyrated. Frisco lunged for the off switch. Hell! His cable must’ve come with some kind of men’s channel—the Playboy Channel or something similar. He honestly hadn’t known.

“Whoa, Tash. I’ve got to program that off the remote control,” he said, turning to the couch to face her.

Except she wasn’t sitting on the couch.

His living room was small, and one quick look assured him that she wasn’t even in the room. Hell, that was a relief. He limped toward the kitchen. She wasn’t there, either, and his relief turned to apprehension.

“Natasha…?” Frisco moved as quickly as he could down the tiny hallway toward the bedrooms and bathroom. He looked, and then he looked again, even glancing underneath his bed and in both closets.

The kid was gone.

His knee twinged as he used a skittering sort of hop and skip to propel himself back into the living room and out the screen door.

She wasn’t on the second-floor landing, or anywhere in immediate view in the condo courtyard. Frisco could see Mia Summerton still working, crouched down among the explosion of flowers that were her garden, a rather silly-looking floppy straw hat covering the top of her head.

“Hey!”

She looked up, startled and uncertain as to where his voice had come from.

“Up here.”

She was too far away for him to see exactly which shade of green or brown her eyes were right now. They were wide though. Her surprise quickly changed to wariness.

He could see a dark vee of perspiration along the collar and down the front of her T-shirt. Her face glistened in the morning heat, and she reached up and wiped her forehead with the back of one arm. It left a smudge of dirt behind.

“Have you seen Natasha—you know, the little girl with red hair? Did she come down this way?”

Mia rinsed her hands in a bucket of water and stood up. “No—and I’ve been out here since you went upstairs.”

Frisco swore and started down past his condo door, toward the stairs at the other side of the complex.

“What happened?” Mia came up the stairs and caught up with him easily.

“I got out of the shower and she was gone,” he told her curtly, trying to move as quickly as he could. Damn, he didn’t want to deal with this. The morning sun had moved high into the sky and the brightness still made his head throb—as did every jarring step he took. It was true that living with him wasn’t going to be any kind of party, but the kid didn’t have to run away, for God’s sake.

But then he saw it.

Sparkling and deceptively pure looking, the alluring blue Pacific Ocean glimmered and danced, beckoning in the distance. The beach was several blocks away. Maybe the kid was like him and had saltwater running through her veins. Maybe she caught one look at the water and headed for the beach. Maybe she wasn’t running away. Maybe she was just exploring. Or maybe she was pushing the edge of the obedience envelope, testing him to see just what she could get away with.

“Do you think she went far? Do you want me to get my car?” Mia asked.

Frisco turned to look at her and realized she was keeping pace with him. He didn’t want her help, but dammit, he needed it. If he was going to find Tasha quickly, four eyes were definitely better than two. And a car was far better than a bum knee and a cane when it came to getting someplace fast.

“Yeah, get your car,” he said gruffly. “I want to check down at the beach.”

Mia nodded once then ran ahead. She’d pulled her car up at the stairs that led to the parking lot before he’d even arrived at the bottom of them. She reached across the seat, unlocking the passenger’s side door of her little subcompact.

Frisco knew he wasn’t going to fit inside. He got in anyway, forcing his right knee to bend more than it comfortably could. Pain and its accompanying nausea washed over him, and he swore sharply—a repetitive, staccato chant, a profane mantra designed to bring him back from the edge.

He looked up to find Mia watching him, her face carefully expressionless.

“Drive,” he told her, his voice sounding harsh to his own ears. “Come on—I don’t even know if this kid can swim.”

She put the car into first gear and it lurched forward. She took the route the child might well have taken if she was, indeed, heading for the beach. Frisco scanned the crowded sidewalks. What exactly had the kid been wearing? Some kind of white shirt with a pattern on it…balloons? Or maybe flowers? And a bright-colored pair of shorts. Or was she wearing a skirt? Was it green or blue? He couldn’t remember, so he watched for her flaming red hair instead.

“Any sign of her?” Mia asked. “Do you want me to slow down?”

“No,” Frisco said. “Let’s get down to the water and make sure she’s not there first. We can work our way back more slowly.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Mia stepped on the gas, risking a glance at Alan Francisco. He didn’t seem to notice her military-style affirmative. He was gripping the handle up above the passenger window so tightly that his knuckles were white. The muscles in his jaw were just as tight, and he kept watching out the window, searching for any sign of his tiny niece in the summertime crowd.

He’d shaved, she noticed, glancing at him again. He looked slightly less dangerous without the stubble—but only slightly.

He’d hurt his knee getting into her car, and Mia knew from the paleness of his face underneath his tan that it hurt him still. But he didn’t complain. Other than his initial explosion of profanity, he hadn’t said a word about it. Finding his niece took priority over his pain. Obviously it took priority, since finding Natasha was important enough for him to call a temporary truce with Mia and accept her offer of help.

She was signaling to make the left into the beach parking lot when the man finally spoke.

“There she is! With some kid. At two o’clock—”

“Where?” Mia slowed, uncertain.

“Just stop the car!”

Francisco opened the door, and Mia slammed on the brakes, afraid he would jump out while the car was still moving. And then she saw Natasha. The little girl was at the edge of the parking lot, sitting on the top of a picnic table, paying solemn attention to a tall African-American teenage boy who was standing in front of her. Something about the way he wore his low-riding, baggy jeans was familiar. The kid turned, and Mia saw his face.

“That’s Thomas King,” she said. “That boy who’s with Natasha—I know him.”

But Francisco was already out of the car, moving as fast as he could with his limp and his cane toward the little girl.

There was nowhere to park. Mia watched through the windshield as the former Navy lieutenant descended upon his niece, pulling her none-too-gently from the table and setting her down on the ground behind him. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she could tell that it wasn’t a friendly greeting. She saw Thomas bristle and turn belligerently toward Francisco, and she threw on her hazard lights and left the car right where it was in the middle of the lot as she jumped out and ran toward them.

She arrived just in time to hear Thomas say, “You raise one hand to that girl and I’ll clean the street with your face.”

Alan Francisco’s blue eyes had looked deadly and cold when Mia first ran up, but now they changed. Something shifted. “What are you talking about? I’m not going to hit her.” He sounded incredulous, as if such a thing would never have occurred to him.

“Then why are you shouting at her as if you are?” Thomas King was nearly Francisco’s height, but the former SEAL had at least fifty pounds of muscle over him. Still, the teenager stood his ground, his dark eyes flashing and narrowed, his lips tight.

“I’m not—”

“Yes, you are,” Thomas persisted. He mimicked the older man. “‘What the hell are you doing here? Who the hell gave you permission to leave…’ I thought you were going to slam her—and she did, too.”

Frisco turned to look at Natasha. She had scurried underneath the picnic table, and she looked back at him, her eyes wide. “Tash, you didn’t think…”

But she had thought that. He could see it in her eyes, in the way she was cowering. Man, he felt sick.

He crouched down next to the table as best he could. “Natasha, did your mom hit you when she was angry?” He couldn’t believe softhearted Sharon would hurt a defenseless child, but liquor did funny things to even the gentlest of souls.

The little girl shook her head no. “Mommy didn’t,” she told him softly, “but Dwayne did once and I got a bloody lip. Mommy cried, and then we moved out.”

Thank God Sharon had had that much sense. Damn Dwayne to hell, whoever he was. What kind of monster would strike a five-year-old child?

What kind of monster would scare her to death by shouting at her the way he just had?

Frisco sat down heavily on the picnic table bench, glancing up at Mia. Her eyes were soft, as if she could somehow read his mind.

“Tash, I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing his aching, bleary eyes. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“This some kind of friend of yours?” the black kid said to Mia, his tone implying she might want to be more selective in her choice of friends in the future.

“He’s in 2C,” Mia told the boy. “The mystery neighbor—Lieutenant Alan Francisco.” She directed her next words to Frisco. “This is Thomas King. He’s a former student of mine. He lives in 1N with his sister and her kids.”

A former…student? That meant that Mia Summerton was a teacher. Damn, if he had had teachers who looked like her, he might’ve actually gone to high school.

She was watching him now with wariness in her eyes, as if he were a bomb on a trick timer, ready to blow at any given moment.

“Lieutenant,” Thomas repeated. “Are you the badge?”

“No, I’m not a cop,” Frisco said, tearing his eyes away from Mia to glance at the kid. “I’m in the Navy….” He caught himself, and shook his head, closing his eyes briefly. “I was in the Navy.”

Thomas had purposely crossed his arms and tucked both hands underneath them to make sure Frisco knew he had no intention of shaking hands.

“The lieutenant was a SEAL,” Mia told Thomas. “That’s a branch of special operations—”

“I know what a SEAL is,” the kid interrupted. He turned to run a bored, cynical eye over Frisco. “One of those crazy freaks that ride the surf and crash their little rubber boats into the rocks down by the hotel in Coronado. Did you ever do that?”

Mia was watching him again, too. Damn but she was pretty. And every time she looked at him, every time their eyes met, Frisco felt a very solid slap of mutual sexual awareness. It was almost funny. With the possible exception of her exotic fashion-model face and trim, athletic body, everything about the woman irritated him. He didn’t want a nosy neighbor poking around in his life. He didn’t need a helpful do-gooder getting in his face and reminding him hourly of his limitations. He had no use for a disgustingly cheerful, flower-planting, antimilitary, unintimidatable, fresh-faced girl-next-door type.

But every single time he looked into her hazel eyes, he felt an undeniable surge of physical attraction. Intellectually, he may have wanted little more than to hide from her, but physically… Well, his body apparently had quite a different agenda. One that included moonlight gleaming on smooth, golden tanned skin, long dark hair trailing across his face, across his chest and lower.

Frisco managed a half smile, wondering if she could read his mind now. He couldn’t look away from her, even to answer Thomas’s question. “It’s called rock portage,” he said, “and, yeah. I did that during training.”

She didn’t blush. She didn’t look away from him. She just steadily returned his gaze, slightly lifting one exotic eyebrow. Frisco had the sense that she did, indeed, know exactly what he was thinking. Cold day in hell. She hadn’t said those exact words last night, but they echoed in his mind as clearly as if she had.

It was just as well. He was having a pure, raw-sex reaction to her, but she wasn’t the pure, raw type. He couldn’t picture her climbing into his bed and then slipping away before dawn, no words spoken, only intense pleasure shared. No, once she got into his bed, she would never get out. She had “girlfriend” written all over her, and that was the last thing he needed. She would fill his apartment with flowers from her garden and endless conversation and little notes with smiley faces on them. She’d demand tender kisses and a clean bathroom and heart-to-heart revelations and a genuine interest in her life.

How could he begin to be interested in her life, when he couldn’t even muster up the slightest enthusiasm for his own?

But he was getting way ahead of himself here. He was assuming that he’d have no trouble getting her into his bed in the first place. That might’ve been true five years ago, but he wasn’t exactly any kind of prize anymore. There was no way a girl like Mia would want to be saddled with a man who could barely even walk.

Cold day in hell. Frisco looked out at the blinding blueness of the ocean, feeling his eyes burn from the glare.

“What’s a SEAL doing with a kid who can’t swim?” Thomas asked. Most of the anger had left the teenager’s eyes, leaving behind a cynical disdain and a seemingly ancient weariness that made him look far older than his years. He had scars on his face, one bisecting one of his eyebrows, the other marking one of his high, pronounced cheekbones. That, combined with the fact that his nose had been broken more than once, gave him a battle-worn look that erased even more of his youth. But except for a few minor slang expressions, Thomas didn’t speak the language of the street. He had no discernible accent of any kind, and Frisco wondered if the kid had worked as hard to delete that particular tie with his past and his parents as he himself had.

“Natasha is the lieutenant’s niece,” Mia explained. “She’s going to stay with him for a few weeks. She just arrived today.”

“From Mars, right?” Thomas looked under the table and made a face at Natasha.

She giggled. “Thomas thinks I’m from Mars ’cause I didn’t know what that water was.” Natasha slithered on her belly out from underneath the table. The sand stuck to her clothes, and Frisco realized that she was wet.

“A little Martian girl is the only kind of girl I can think of who hasn’t seen the ocean before,” Thomas said. “She didn’t even seem to know kids shouldn’t go into the water alone.”

Mia watched myriad emotions cross Alan Francisco’s face. The lifeguard’s flag was out today, signaling a strong undertow and dangerous currents. She saw him look at Thomas and register the fact that the teenager’s jeans were wet up to his knees.

“You went in after her,” he said, his low voice deceptively even.

Thomas was as nonchalant. “I’ve got a five-year-old niece, too.”

Francisco pulled himself painfully up with his cane. He held out his hand to Thomas. “Thanks, man. I’m sorry about before. I’m…new at this kid thing.”

Mia held her breath. She knew Thomas well, and if he’d decided that Alan Francisco was the enemy, he’d never shake his hand.

But Thomas hesitated only briefly before he clasped the older man’s hand.

Again, a flurry of emotions flickered in Francisco’s eyes, and again he tried to hide it all. Relief. Gratitude. Sorrow. Always sorrow and always shame. But it was all gone almost before it was even there. When Alan Francisco tried to hide his emotions, he succeeded, tucking them neatly behind the ever-present anger that simmered inside of him.

He managed to use that anger to hide everything quite nicely—everything except the seven-thousand-degree nuclear-powered sexual attraction he felt for her. That he put on display, complete with neon signs and million-dollar-a-minute advertising.

Good grief, last night when he’d made that crack about wanting her to share his bed, she’d thought he’d been simply trying to scare her off.

She had been dead wrong. The way he’d looked at her just minutes ago had nearly singed her eyebrows off. And the truly stupid thing was that the thought of having a physical relationship with this man didn’t send her running for her apartment and the heavy-duty dead bolt that she’d had installed on her door. She couldn’t figure out why. Lt. Alan Francisco was a real-life version of G.I. Joe, he was probably a male chauvinist, he drank so much that he still looked like hell at noon on a weekday and he carried a seemingly permanent chip on his shoulder. Yet for some bizarre reason, Mia had no trouble imagining herself pulling him by the hand into her bedroom and melting together with him on her bed.

It had nothing to do with his craggy-featured, handsome face and enticingly hard-muscled body. Well, yes, okay, so she wasn’t being completely honest with herself. It had at least a little bit to do with that. It was true—the fact that the man looked as if he should have his own three-month segment in a hunk-of-the-month calendar was not something she’d failed to notice. And notice, and notice and notice.

But try as she might, it was the softness in his eyes when he spoke to Natasha and his crooked, painful attempts to smile at the little girl that she found hard to resist. She was a sucker for kindness, and she suspected that beneath this man’s outer crust of anger and bitterness, and despite his sometimes crude language and rough behavior, there lurked the kindest of souls.

“Here’s the deal about the beach,” Alan Francisco was saying to his niece. “You never come down here without a grown-up, and you never, ever go into the water alone.”

“That’s what Thomas said,” Tasha told him. “He said I might’ve drownded.”

“Thomas is right,” Francisco told her.

“What’s drownded?”

“Drowned,” he corrected her. “You ever try to breathe underwater?”

Tash shook her head no, and her red curls bounced.

“Well, don’t try it. People can’t breathe underwater. Only fish can. And you don’t look like a fish to me.”

The little girl giggled, but persisted. “What’s drownded?”

Mia crossed her arms, wondering if Francisco would try to sidestep the issue again, or if he would take the plunge and discuss the topic of death with Natasha.

“Well,” he said slowly, “if someone goes into the water, and they can’t swim, or they hurt themselves, or the waves are too high, then the water might go over their head. Then they can’t breathe. Normally, when the water goes over your head it’s no big deal. You hold your breath. And then you just swim to the surface and stick your nose and mouth out and take a breath of air. But like I said, maybe this person doesn’t know how to swim, or maybe their leg got a cramp, or the water’s too rough, so they can’t get up to the air. And if there’s no air for them to breathe…well, they’ll die. They’ll drown. People need to breathe air to live.”

Natasha gazed unblinkingly at her uncle, her head tilted slightly to one side. “I don’t know how to swim,” she finally said.

“Then I’ll teach you,” Francisco said unhesitatingly. “Everyone should know how to swim. But even when you do know how to swim, you still don’t swim alone. That way, if you do get hurt, you got a friend who can save you from drowning. Even in the SEALs we didn’t swim alone. We had something called swim buddies—a friend who looked out for you, and you’d look out for him, too. You and me, Tash, for the next few weeks, we’re going to be swim buddies, okay?”

“I’m outta here, Ms. S. I don’t want to be late for work.”

Mia turned to Thomas, glad he’d broken into her reverie. She’d been standing there like an idiot, gazing at Alan Francisco, enthralled by his conversation with his niece. “Be careful,” she told him.

“Always am.”

Natasha crouched down in the sand and began pushing an old Popsicle stick around as if it were a car. Thomas bent over and ruffled her hair. “See you later, Martian girl.” He nodded to Francisco. “Lieutenant.”

The SEAL pulled himself up and off the bench. “Call me Frisco. And thanks again, man.”

Thomas nodded once more and then was gone.

“He works part-time as a security guard at the university,” Mia told Francisco. “That way he can audit college courses in his spare time—spare time that doesn’t exist because he also works a full day as a landscaper’s assistant over in Coronado.”

He was looking at her again, his steel blue eyes shuttered and unreadable this time. He hadn’t told her she could call him Frisco. Maybe it was a guy thing. Maybe SEALs weren’t allowed to let women call them by their nicknames. Or maybe it was more personal than that. Maybe Alan Francisco didn’t want her as a friend. He’d certainly implied as much last night.

Mia looked back at her car, still sitting in the middle of the parking lot. “Well,” she said, feeling strangely awkward. She had no problem holding her own with this man when he came on too strong or acted rudely. But when he simply stared at her like this, with no expression besides the faintest glimmer of his ever-present anger on his face, she felt off balance and ill at ease, like a schoolgirl with an unrequited crush. “I’m glad we found—you found Natasha…” She glanced back at her car again, more to escape his scrutiny than to reassure herself it was still there. “Can I give you a lift back to the condo?”

Frisco shook his head. “No, thanks.”

“I could adjust the seat, see if I could make it more comfortable for you to—”

“No, we’ve got some shopping to do.”

“But Natasha’s all wet.”

“She’ll dry. Besides, I could use the exercise.”

Exercise? Was he kidding? “What you could use is a week or two off your feet, in bed.”

Just like that, he seemed to come alive, his mouth twisting into a sardonic half smile. His eyes sparked with heat and he lowered his voice, leaning forward to speak directly into her ear. “Are you volunteering to keep me there? I knew sooner or later you’d change your mind.”

He knew nothing of the sort. He’d only said that to rattle and irritate her. Mia refused to let him see just how irritated his comment had made her. Instead, she stepped even closer, looking up at him, letting her gaze linger on his mouth before meeting his eyes, meaning to make him wonder, and to make him squirm before she launched her attack.

But she launched nothing as she looked into his eyes. His knowing smile had faded, leaving behind only heat. It magnified, doubling again and again, increasing logarithmically as their gazes locked, burning her down to her very soul. She knew that he could see more than just a mere reflection of his desire in her eyes, and she knew without a doubt that she’d given too much away. This fire that burned between them was not his alone.

The sun was beating down on them and her mouth felt parched. She tried to swallow, tried to moisten her dry lips, tried to walk away. But she couldn’t move.

He reached out slowly. She could see it coming—he was going to touch her, pull her close against the hard muscles of his chest and cover her mouth with his own in a heated, heart-stopping, nuclear meltdown of a kiss.

But he touched her only lightly, tracing the path of a bead of sweat that had trailed down past her ear, down her neck and across her collarbone before it disappeared beneath the collar of her T-shirt. He touched her gently, only with one finger, but in many ways it was far more sensual, far more intimate than even a kiss.

The world seemed to spin and Mia almost reached for him. But sanity kicked in, thank God, and instead she backed away.

“When I change my mind,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper, “it’ll be a cold day in July.”

She turned on legs that were actually trembling—trembling—and headed toward her car. He made no move to follow, but as she got inside and drove away, she could see him in the rearview mirror, still watching her.

Had she convinced him? She doubted it. She wasn’t sure she’d even managed to convince herself.

CHAPTER FIVE

“OKAY, TASH,” FRISCO called down from the second-floor landing where he’d finally finished lashing the framework to the railing. “Ready for a test run?”

She nodded, and he let out the crank and lowered the rope down to her.

The realization had come to him while they were grocery shopping. He wasn’t going to be able to carry the bags of food he bought up the stairs to his second-floor condominium. And Tasha, as helpful as she tried to be when she wasn’t wandering off, couldn’t possibly haul all the food they needed up a steep flight of stairs. She could maybe handle one or two lightweight bags, but certainly no more than that.

But Frisco had been an expert in unconventional warfare for the past ten years. He could come up with alternative, creative solutions to damn near any situation—including this one. Of course, this wasn’t war, which made it that much easier. Whatever he came up with, he wasn’t going to have to pull it off while underneath a rain of enemy bullets.

It hadn’t taken him long to come up with a solution. He and Tasha had stopped at the local home building supply store and bought themselves the fixings for a rope-and-pulley system. Frisco could’ve easily handled just a rope to pull things up to the second-floor landing, but with a crank and some pulleys, Natasha would be able to use it, too.

The plastic bags filled with the groceries they’d bought were on the ground, directly underneath the rope to which he’d attached a hook.

“Hook the rope to one of the bags,” Frisco commanded his niece, leaning over the railing. “Right through the handles—that’s right.”

Mia Summerton was watching him.

He’d been hyperaware of her from the moment he and Tash had climbed out of the taxi with all of their groceries. She’d been back in her garden again, doing God knows what and watching him out of the corner of her eye.

She’d watched as he’d transferred the frozen food and perishables into a backpack he’d bought and carried them inside. She’d watched as he’d done the same with the building supplies and set them out on the second-floor landing. She’d watched as he awkwardly lowered himself down to sit on the stairs with his tool kit and began to work.

She’d watched, but she’d been careful never to let him catch her watching.

Just the same, he felt her eyes following him. And he could damn near smell her awareness.

Man, whatever it was that they’d experienced back on the beach… He shook his head in disbelief. Whatever it was, he wanted some more. A whole lot of more. She’d looked at him, and he’d been caught in an amazing vortex of animal magnetism. He hadn’t been able to resist touching her, hadn’t been able to stop thinking about exactly where that droplet of perspiration had gone after it had disappeared from view beneath her shirt. It hadn’t taken much imagination to picture it traveling slowly between her breasts, all the way down to her softly indented belly button.

He’d wanted to dive in after it.

It had been damn near enough to make him wonder if he’d seriously underrated smiley-face-endowed notes.

But he’d seen the shock in Mia’s eyes. She hadn’t expected the attraction that had surged between them. She didn’t want it, didn’t want him. Certainly not for a single, mind-blowing sexual encounter, and definitely not for anything longer term. That was no big surprise.

“I can’t get it,” Natasha called up to him, her face scrunched with worry.

Mia had kept to herself ever since they’d arrived home. Her offers to help had been noticeably absent. But now she stood up, apparently unable to ignore the note of anxiety in Tasha’s voice.

“May I help you with that, Natasha?” She spoke directly to the little girl. She didn’t even bother to look up at Frisco.

Frisco wiped the sweat from his face as he watched Tasha step back and Mia attach the hook to the plastic handles of the grocery bags. It had to be close to ninety degrees in the shade, but when Mia finally did glance up at him there was a definite wintry chill in the air.

She was trying her damnedest to act as if she had not even the slightest interest in him. Yet she’d spent the past hour and a half watching him. Why?

Maybe whatever this was that constantly drew his eyes in her direction, whatever this was that had made him hit his thumb with his hammer more times than he could count, whatever this was that made every muscle in his body tighten in anticipation when he so much as thought about her, whatever this uncontrollable sensation was—maybe she felt it, too.

It was lust and desire, amplified a thousandfold, mutated into something far more powerful.

He didn’t want her. He didn’t want the trouble, didn’t want the hassle, didn’t want the grief. And yet, at the same time, he wanted her desperately. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any woman before.

If he’d been the type to get frightened, he would’ve been terrified.

“We better stand back,” Mia warned Tasha as Frisco began turning the crank.

It went up easily enough, the bag bulging and straining underneath the weight. But then, as if in slow motion, the bottom of the plastic bag gave out, and its contents went plummeting to the ground.

Frisco swore loudly as a six-pack shattered into pieces of brown glass, the beer mixing unappetizingly with cranberry juice from a broken half-gallon container, four flattened tomatoes and an avocado that never again would see the light of day. The loaf of Italian bread that had also been in the bag had, thankfully, bounced free and clear of the disaster.

Mia looked down at the wreckage, and then up at Alan Francisco. He’d cut short his litany of curses and stood silently, his mouth tight and his eyes filled with far more despair than the situation warranted.

But she knew he was seeing more than a mess on the courtyard sidewalk as he looked over the railing. She knew he was seeing his life, shattered as absolutely as those beer bottles.

Still he took a deep breath, and forced himself to smile down into Natasha’s wide eyes.

“We’re on the right track here,” he said, lowering the rope again. “We’re definitely very close to outrageous success.” Using his cane, he started down the stairs. “How about we try double bagging? Or a paper bag inside of the plastic one?”

“How about cloth bags?” Mia suggested.

“Back away, Tash—that’s broken glass,” Alan called warningly. “Yeah, cloth bags would work, but I don’t have any.”

Alan, Mia thought. When had he become Alan instead of Francisco? Was it when he looked down at his niece and made himself smile despite his pain, or was it earlier, at the beach parking lot, when he’d nearly lit Mia on fire with a single look?

Mia ran up the stairs past him, suddenly extremely aware that he’d taken off his shirt nearly an hour ago. His smooth tanned skin and hard muscles had been hard to ignore even from a distance. Up close it was impossible for Mia not to stare.

He wore only a loose-fitting, bright-colored bathing suit, and it rode low on his lean hips. His stomach was a washboard of muscles, and his skin gleamed with sweat. And that other tattoo on his biceps was a sea serpent, not a mermaid, as she’d first thought.

“I’ve got some bags,” Mia called out, escaping into the coolness of her apartment, stopping for a moment to take a long, shaky breath. What was it about this man that made her heart beat double time? He was intriguing; she couldn’t deny that. And he exuded a wildness, a barely tamed sexuality that constantly managed to captivate her. But so what? He was sexy. He was gorgeous. He was working hard to overcome a raftload of serious problems, making him seem tragic and fascinating. But these were not the criteria she usually used to decide whether or not to enter into a sexual relationship with a man.

The fact was that she wasn’t going to sleep with him, she told herself firmly. Definitely probably not. She rolled her eyes in self-disgust. Definitely probably…?

It had to be the full moon making her feel this way. Or—as her mother might say—maybe her astrological planets were lined up in some strange configuration, making her feel restless and reckless. Or maybe as she neared thirty, her body was changing, releasing hormones in quantities that she could no longer simply ignore.

Whatever the reason—mystical or scientific—the fact remained that she would not have sex with a stranger. Whatever happened between them, it wasn’t going to happen until she’d had a chance to get to know this man. And once she got to know him and his vast collection of both physical and psychological problems, she had a feeling that staying away from him wasn’t going to be so very difficult.

She took her cloth grocery bags from the closet and went back outside. Alan was crouched awkwardly down on the sidewalk, attempting to clean up the mess.

“Alan, wait. Don’t try to pick up the broken glass,” she called down to him. “I’ve got work gloves and a shovel you can use to clean it up.” She didn’t dare offer to do the work for him. She knew he would refuse. “I’ll get ’em. Here—catch.”

She threw the bags over the railing, and he caught them with little effort as she turned to go back inside.

Frisco looked at the printed message on the outside of the bags Mia had tossed him and rolled his eyes. Of course it had to be something political. Shaking his head, he sat down on the grass and began transferring the un-demolished remainder of the groceries into the cloth bags.

“‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we fully funded education, and the government had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber?’” he quoted from the bags when Mia came back down the stairs.

She was holding a plastic trash bag, a pair of work gloves and what looked rather suspiciously like a pooper-scooper. She gave him a crooked smile. “Yeah,” she said. “I thought you would like that.”

“I’d be glad to get into a knock-down, drag-out argument about the average civilian’s ignorance regarding military spending some other time,” he told her. “But right now I’m not really in the mood.”

“How about if I pretend you didn’t just call me ignorant, and you pretend I don’t think you’re some kind of rigid, militaristic, dumb-as-a-stone professional soldier?” she said much too sweetly.

Frisco had to laugh. It was a deep laugh, a belly laugh, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. He was still smiling when he looked up at her. “That sounds fair,” he said. “And who knows—maybe we’re both wrong.”

Mia smiled back at him, but it was tentative and wary.

“I didn’t get to thank you for helping me this morning,” he said. “I’m sorry if I was…”

Mia gazed at him, waiting for him to finish his sentence. Unfriendly? Worried? Upset? Angry? Inappropriate? Too sexy for words? She wondered exactly what he was apologizing for.

“Rude,” he finally finished. He glanced over at Natasha. She was lying on her back in the shade of a palm tree, staring up at the sky through both her spread fingers and the fronds, singing some unintelligible and probably improvised song. “I’m in way over my head here,” he admitted with another crooked smile. “I don’t know the first thing about taking care of a kid, and…” He shrugged. “Even if I did, these days I’m not exactly in the right place psychologically, you know?”

“You’re doing great.”

The look he shot her was loaded with amusement and disbelief. “She was under my care for not even thirty minutes and I managed to lose her.” He shifted his weight, trying to get more comfortable, wincing slightly at the pain in his leg. “While we were walking home, I talked to her about setting up some rules and regs—basic stuff, like she has to tell me if she’s going outside the condo, and she’s got to play inside the courtyard. She looked at me like I was speaking French.” He paused, glancing back at the little girl again. “As far as I can tell, Sharon had absolutely no rules. She let the kid go where she pleased, when she pleased. I’m not sure anything I said sunk in.”

He pulled himself up with his cane, and carried one of the filled cloth bags toward the hook and rope, sidestepping the puddle of broken glass, sodden cardboard and cranberry juiced-beer.

“You’ve got to give her time, Alan,” Mia said. “You’ve got to remember that living here without her mom around has to be as new and as strange to her as it is to you.”

He turned to look back at her as he attached the hook to the cloth handles. “You know,” he said, “generally people don’t call me Alan. I’m Frisco. I’ve been Frisco for years.” He started up the stairs. “I mean, Sharon—my sister—she calls me Alan, but everyone else calls me Frisco, from my swim buddy to my CO….”

Frisco looked down at Mia. She was standing in the courtyard, watching him and not trying to hide it this time. Her gardening clothes were almost as filthy as his, and several strands of her long, dark hair had escaped from her ponytail. How come he felt like a sweat-sodden reject from hell, while she managed to look impossibly beautiful?

“CO?” she repeated.

“Commanding Officer,” he explained, turning the crank. The bag went up, and this time it made it all the way to the second floor.

Mia applauded and Natasha came over to do several clumsy forward rolls in the grass in celebration.

Frisco reached over the railing and pulled the bag up and onto the landing next to him.

“Lower the rope. I’ll hook up the next one,” Mia said.

It went up just as easily.

“Come on, Tash. Come upstairs and help me put away these supplies,” Frisco called, and the little girl came barreling up the stairs. He turned back to look down at Mia. “I’ll be down in a minute to clean up that mess.”

“Alan, you know, I don’t have anything better to do and I can—”

“Frisco,” he interrupted her. “Not Alan. And I’m cleaning it up, not you.”

“Do you mind if I call you Alan? I mean, after all, it is your name—”

“Yeah, I mind. It’s not my name. Frisco’s my name. Frisco is who I became when I joined the SEALs.” His voice got softer. “Alan is nobody.”

FRISCO WOKE TO the sound of a blood-chilling scream.

He was rolling out of bed, onto the floor, reaching, searching for his weapon, even before he was fully awake. But he had no firearm hidden underneath his pillow or down alongside his bed—he’d locked them all up in a trunk in his closet. He wasn’t in the jungle on some dangerous mission, catching a combat nap. He was in his bedroom, in San Felipe, California, and the noise that had kicked him out of bed came from the powerful vocal cords of his five-year-old niece, who was supposed to be sound asleep on the couch in the living room.

Frisco stumbled to the wall and flipped on the light. Reaching this time for his cane, he opened his bedroom door and staggered down the hallway toward the living room.

He could see Natasha in the dim light that streamed down the hallway from his bedroom. She was crying, sitting up in a tangle of sheets on the couch, sweat matting her hair.

“Hey,” Frisco said. “What the h…uh… What’s going on, Tash?”

The kid didn’t answer. She just kept on crying.

Frisco sat down next to her, but all she did was cry.

“You want a hug or something?” he asked, and she shook her head no and kept on crying.

“Um,” Frisco said, uncertain of what to do, or what to say.

There was a tap on the door.

“You want to get that?” Frisco asked Natasha.

She didn’t respond.

“I guess I’ll get it then,” he said, unlocking the bolt and opening the heavy wooden door.

Mia stood on the other side of the screen. She was wearing a white bathrobe and her hair was down loose around her shoulders. “Is everything all right?”

“No, I’m not murdering or torturing my niece,” Frisco said flatly and closed the door. But he opened it again right away and pushed open the screen. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Tash’s On/Off switch is, would you?”

“It’s dark in here,” Mia said, stepping inside. “Maybe you should turn on all the lights so that she can see where she is.”

Frisco turned on the bright overhead light—and realized he was standing in front of his neighbor and his niece in nothing but the new, tight-fitting, utilitarian white briefs he’d bought during yesterday’s second trip to the grocery store. Good thing he’d bought them, or he quite possibly would have been standing there buck naked.

Whether it was the sudden light or the sight of him in his underwear, Frisco didn’t know, but Natasha stopped crying, just like that. She still sniffled, and tears still flooded her eyes, but her sirenlike wail was silenced.

Mia was clearly thrown by the sight of him—and determined to act as if visiting with a neighbor who was in his underwear was the most normal thing in the world. She sat down on the couch next to Tasha and gave her a hug. Frisco excused himself and headed down the hall toward his bedroom and a pair of shorts.

It wasn’t really that big a deal—Lucky O’Donlon, Frisco’s swim buddy and best friend in the SEAL unit, had bought Frisco a tan-through French bathing suit from the Riviera that covered far less of him than these briefs. Of course, the minuscule suit wasn’t something he’d ever be caught dead in….

He threw on his shorts and came back out into the living room.

“It must’ve been a pretty bad nightmare,” he heard Mia saying to Tasha.

“I fell into a big, dark hole,” Tash said in a tiny voice in between a very major case of hiccups. “And I was screaming and screaming and screaming, and I could see Mommy way, way up at the top, but she didn’t hear me. She had on her mad face, and she just walked away. And then water went up and over my head, and I knew I was gonna drownd.”

Frisco swore silently. He wasn’t sure he could relieve Natasha’s fears of abandonment, but he would do his best to make sure she didn’t fear the ocean. He sat down next to her on the couch and she climbed into his lap. His heart lurched as she locked her little arms around his neck.

“Tomorrow morning we’ll start your swimming lessons, okay?” he said gruffly, trying to keep the emotion that had suddenly clogged his throat from sounding in his voice.

Natasha nodded. “When I woke up, it was so dark. And someone turned off the TV.”

“I turned it off when I went to bed,” Frisco told her.

She lifted her head and gazed up at him. The tip of her nose was pink and her face was streaked and still wet from her tears. “Mommy always sleeps with it on. So she won’t feel lonely.”

Mia was looking at him over the top of Tasha’s red curls. She was holding her tongue, but it was clear that she had something to say.

“Why don’t you make a quick trip to the head?” he said to Tasha.

She nodded and climbed off his lap. “The head is the bathroom on a boat,” she told Mia, wiping her runny nose on her hand. “Before bedtime, me and Frisco pretended we were on a pirate boat. He was the cap’n.”

Mia tried to hide her smile. So that was the cause of the odd sounds she’d heard from Frisco’s apartment at around eight o’clock.

“We also played Russian Princess,” the little girl added.

Frisco actually blushed—his rugged cheekbones were tinged with a delicate shade of pink. “It’s after 0200, Tash. Get moving. And wash your face and blow your nose while you’re in there.”

“Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum,” Mia said to him as the little girl disappeared down the hallway.

The pink tinge didn’t disappear, but Frisco met her gaze steadily. “I’m doomed, aren’t I?” he said, resignation in his voice. “You’re going to tease me about this until the end of time.”

Mia grinned. “I do feel as if I’ve been armed with a powerful weapon,” she admitted, adding, “Your Majesty. Oh, or did you let Natasha take a turn and be the princess?”

“Very funny.”

“What I would give to have been a fly on the wall….”

“She’s five years old,” he tried to explain, running his hand through his disheveled blond hair. “I don’t have a single toy in the house. Or any books besides the ones I’m reading—which are definitely inappropriate. I don’t even have paper and pencils to draw with—”

She’d gone too far with her teasing. “You don’t have to explain. Actually, I think it’s incredibly sweet. It’s just…surprising. You don’t really strike me as the make-believe type.”

Frisco leaned forward.

“Look, Tash is gonna come back out soon. If there’s something you want to tell me without her overhearing, you better say it now.”

Mia was surprised again. He hadn’t struck her as being extremely perceptive. In fact, he always seemed to be a touch self-absorbed and tightly wrapped up in his anger. But he was right. There was something that she wanted to ask him about the little girl.

“I was just wondering,” she said, “if you’ve talked to Natasha about exactly where her mother is right now.”

He shook his head.

“Maybe you should.”

He shifted his position, obviously uncomfortable. “How do you talk about things like addiction and alcoholism to a five-year-old?”

“She probably knows more about it than you’d believe,” Mia said quietly.

“Yeah, I guess she would,” he said.

“It might make her feel a little bit less as if she’s been deserted.”

He looked up at her, meeting her eyes. Even now, in this moment of quiet, serious conversation, when Mia’s eyes met his, there was a powerful burst of heat.

His gaze slipped down to the open neckline of her bathrobe, and she could see him looking at the tiny piece of her nightgown that was exposed. It was white, with a narrow white eyelet ruffle.

He wanted to see the rest of it—she knew that from the hunger in his eyes. Would he be disappointed if he knew that her nightgown was simple and functional? It was plain, not sexy, made from lightweight cotton.

He looked into her eyes again. No, he wouldn’t be disappointed, because if they ever were in a position in which he would see her in her nightgown, she would only be wearing it for all of three seconds before he removed it and it landed in a pile on the floor.

The bathroom door opened, and Frisco finally looked away as their pint-size chaperon came back into the living room.

“I’d better go.” Mia stood up. “I’ll just let myself out.”

“I’m hungry,” the little girl said.

Frisco pulled himself to his feet. “Well, let’s go into the kitchen and see what we can find to eat.” He turned to look back at Mia. “I’m sorry we woke you.”

“It’s all right.” Mia turned toward the door.

“Hey, Tash,” she heard Frisco say as she let herself out through the screen door, “did your mom talk to you at all about where she was going?”

Mia shut the door behind her and went back into her own apartment.

She took off her robe and got into bed, but sleep was elusive. She couldn’t stop thinking about Alan Francisco.

It was funny—the fact that Mia had found out he’d been kind enough to play silly make-believe games with his niece made him blush, yet he’d answered the door dressed only in his underwear with nary a smidgen of embarrassment.

Of course, with a body like his, what was there to be embarrassed about?

Still, the briefs he’d been wearing were brief indeed. The snug-fitting white cotton left very little to the imagination. And Mia had a very vivid imagination.

She opened her eyes, willing that same imagination not to get too carried away. Talk about make-believe games. She could make believe that she honestly wasn’t bothered by the fact that Alan had spent most of his adult life as a professional soldier, and Alan could make believe that he wasn’t weighed down by his physical challenge, that he was psychologically healthy, that he wasn’t battling depression and resorting to alcohol to numb his unhappiness.

Mia rolled over onto her stomach and switched on the lamp on her bedside table. She was wide-awake, so she would read. It was better than lying in the dark dreaming about things that would never happen.

FRISCO COVERED THE sleeping child with a light blanket. The television provided a flickering light and the soft murmur of voices. Tasha hadn’t fallen asleep until he’d turned it on, and he knew better now than to turn it off.

He went into the kitchen and poured himself a few fingers of whiskey and took a swallow, welcoming the burn and the sensation of numbness that followed. Man, he needed that. Talking to Natasha about Sharon’s required visit to the detox center had not been fun. But it had been necessary. Mia had been right.

Tash had had no clue where her mother had gone. She’d thought, in fact, that Sharon had gone to jail. The kid had heard bits and pieces of conversations about the car accident her mother had been involved in, and thought Sharon had been arrested for running someone over.

Frisco had explained how the driver of the car Sharon had struck was badly hurt and in the hospital, but not dead. He didn’t go into detail about what would happen if the man were to die—she didn’t need to hear that. But he did try to explain what a detox center was, and why Sharon couldn’t leave the facility to visit Natasha, and why Tash couldn’t go there to visit her.

The kid had looked skeptical when Frisco told her that when Sharon came out of detox, she wouldn’t drink anymore. Frisco shook his head. A five-year-old cynic. What was the world coming to?

He took both his glass and the bottle back through the living room and outside onto the dimly lit landing. The sterile environment of air-conditioned sameness in his condo always got to him, particularly at this time of night. He took a deep breath of the humid, salty air, filling his lungs with the warm scent of the sea.

He sat down on the steps and took another sip of the whiskey. He willed it to make him relax, to put him to sleep, to carry him past these darkest, longest hours of the early morning. He silently cursed the fact that here it was, nearly 0300 again, and here he was, wide awake. He’d been so certain when he’d climbed into bed tonight that his exhaustion would carry him through and keep him sound asleep until the morning. He hadn’t counted on Tasha’s 0200 reveille. He drained his glass and poured himself another drink.

Mia’s door barely made a sound as it opened, but he heard it in the quiet. Still, he didn’t move as she came outside, and he didn’t speak until she stood at the railing, looking down at him.

“How long ago did your dog die?” he asked, keeping his voice low so as not to wake the other condo residents.

She stood very, very still for several long seconds. Finally she laughed softly and sat down next to him on the stairs. “About eight months ago,” she told him, her voice velvety in the darkness. “How did you know I had a dog?”

“Good guess,” he murmured.

“No, really… Tell me.”

“The pooper-scooper you lent me to clean up the mess in the courtyard was a major hint,” he said. “And your car had—how do I put this delicately?—a certain canine perfume.”

“Her name was Zu. She was about a million years old in dog years. I got her when I was eight.”

“Z-o-o?” Frisco asked.

“Z-u,” she said. “It was short for Zu-zu. I named her after a little girl in a movie—”

“It’s a Wonderful Life,” he said.

Mia gazed at him, surprised again. “You’ve seen it?”

He shrugged. “Hasn’t everybody?”

“Probably. But most people don’t remember the name of George Bailey’s youngest daughter.”

“It’s a personal favorite.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Amazing that I should like it, huh? All of the war scenes in it are incidental.”

“I didn’t say that….”

“But you were thinking it.” Frisco took a sip of his drink. It was whiskey. Mia could smell the pungent scent from where she was sitting. “Sorry about your dog.”

“Thanks,” Mia said. She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I still miss her.”

“Too soon to get another, huh?” he said.

She nodded.

“What breed was she? No, let me guess.” He shifted slightly to face her. She could feel him studying her in the darkness, as if what he could see would help him figure out the answer.

She kept her eyes averted, suddenly afraid to look him in the eye. Why had she come out here? She didn’t usually make a habit of inviting disaster, and sitting in the dark a mere foot away from this man was asking for trouble.

“Part lab, part spaniel,” Frisco finally said, and she did look up.

“You’re half-right—although cocker spaniel was the only part I could ever identify. Although sometimes I thought I saw a bit of golden retriever.” She paused. “How did you know she was a mix?”

He lowered his eyebrows in a look of mock incredulousness. “Like you’d ever get a dog from anywhere but the pound…? And probably from death row at the pound, too, right?”

She had to smile. “Okay, obviously you’ve figured me out completely. There’s no longer any mystery in our relationship—”

“Not quite. There’s one last thing I need you to clear up for me.”

He was smiling at her in the darkness, flirting with her, indulging in lighthearted banter. Mia would have been amazed, had she not learned by now that Alan Francisco was full of surprises.

“What are you doing still awake?” he asked.

“I could ask the same of you,” she countered.

“I’m recovering from my talk with Tasha.” He looked down into his glass, the light mood instantly broken. “I’m not sure I helped any. She’s pretty jaded when it comes to her mom.” He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “She has every right to be.”

Mia looked over toward Frisco’s condo. She could see the flicker of the television through a gap in the curtains. “She’s not still up, is she?”

He sighed, shaking his head no. “She needs the TV on to sleep. I wish I could find a solution to not sleeping that’s as easy.”

Mia looked down at the drink in his hand. “That’s probably not it.”

Frisco didn’t say anything—he just looked at her. To Mia’s credit, she didn’t say another word. She didn’t preach, didn’t chastise, didn’t lecture.

But after several long moments when he didn’t respond, she stood up.

“Good night,” she said.

He didn’t want her to leave. Oddly enough, the night wasn’t so damned oppressive when she was around. But he didn’t know what to say to make her stay. He could’ve told her that he wasn’t like Sharon, that he could stop drinking when and if he wanted to, but that would have sounded exactly like a problem drinker’s claim.

He could’ve told her he was strong enough to stop—he just wasn’t strong enough right now to face the fact that the Navy had quit on him.

Instead, he said nothing, and she quietly went inside, locking her door behind her.

And he poured himself another drink.

CHAPTER SIX

MIA’S LEGS BURNED as she rounded the corner onto Harris Avenue. She was nearly there, down to the last quarter mile of her run, so she put on a burst of speed.

There was construction going on just about a block and a half from the condo complex. Someone was building another fast-food restaurant—just what this neighborhood needed, she thought.

They’d poured the concrete for the foundation, and the project was at a temporary standstill while the mixture hardened. The lot was deserted. Several A&B Construction Co. trucks were parked at haphazard angles among huge hills of displaced dirt and broken asphalt.

A little girl sat digging on top of one of those hills, her face and clothing streaked with dirt, her red hair gleaming in the sunlight.

Mia skidded to a stop.

Sure enough, it was Natasha. She was oblivious to everything around her, digging happily in the sun-hardened dirt, singing a little song.

Mia tried to catch her breath as she ducked underneath the limp yellow ribbon that was supposed to warn trespassers off the construction sight. “Natasha?”

The little girl looked down at her and smiled. “Hi, Mia.”

“Honey, does your uncle know where you are?”

“He’s asleep,” Tasha said, returning to her digging. She’d found a plastic spoon and a discarded paper cup and was filling it with dirt and stirring the dirt as if it were coffee. She had mud covering close to every inch of her exposed skin—which was probably good since the morning sun was hot enough to give her a bad sunburn. “It’s still early. He won’t be up ’til later.”

Mia glanced at her watch. “Tash, it’s nearly ten. He’s got to be awake by now. He’s probably going crazy, looking for you. Don’t you remember what he told you—about not leaving the courtyard, and not even going out of the condo without telling him?”

Tasha glanced up at her. “How can I tell him when he’s asleep?” she said matter of factly. “Mommy always slept until after lunchtime.”

Mia held out her hands to help Tasha down from the dirt pile. “Come on. I’ll walk you home. We can check to see if Frisco’s still asleep.”

The little girl stood up and Mia swung her down to the ground.

“You are dirty, aren’t you?” she continued as they began walking toward the condo complex. “I think a bath is in your immediate future.”

Tasha looked at her arms and legs. “I already had a bath—a mud bath. Princesses always have mud baths, and they never have more than one bath a day.”

“Oh?” Mia said. “I thought princesses always had bubble baths right after their mud baths.”

Tasha considered that thoughtfully. “I never had a bubble bath.”

“It’s very luxurious,” Mia told her. What a sight they must’ve made walking down the street—a mud-encrusted child and an adult literally dripping with perspiration. “The bubbles go right up to your chin.”

Natasha’s eyes were very wide. “Really?”

“Yeah, and I just happen to have some bubble-bath soap,” Mia told her. “You can try it out when we get home—unless you’re absolutely certain you don’t want a second bath today…?”

“No, princesses can only have one mud bath a day,” Tasha told her in complete seriousness. “It’s okay if they have a mud bath and a bubble bath.”

“Good.” Mia smiled as they entered the condo courtyard.

The complex was still pretty quiet. Most of the residents had left for work hours ago. Still, it was summer vacation for the few kids who lived in the building. Mia could hear the distant strains of television sets and stereo systems. Tasha followed her up the stairs to unit 2C.

The door was ajar and Mia knocked on the screen. “Hello?” she called, but there was no answer. She leaned on the bell. Still nothing.

Mia looked at the mud caked on Natasha’s body and clothes. “You better wait out here,” she told the little girl.

Tasha nodded.

“Right here,” Mia said in her best teacher’s voice, pointing to the little spot of concrete directly in front of Frisco’s door. “Sit. And don’t go anywhere, do you understand, miss?”

Tasha nodded again and sat down.

Feeling very much like a trespasser, Mia opened the screen door and went inside. With the curtains closed, the living room was dim. The television was on, but the volume was set to a low, barely discernible murmur. The air was cool, almost cold, as if the air conditioner had been working overtime to compensate for the slightly opened door. Mia turned off the TV as she went past.

“Hello?” Mia called again. “Lieutenant Francisco…?”

The condo was as silent as a tomb.

“He’s gonna be grumpy if you wake him up,” Tasha said, up on her knees with her nose pressed against the screen.

“I’ll take my chances,” Mia said, starting down the hall toward the bedrooms. She was tiptoeing, though. When she reached the end of the hall, she glanced quickly into the bathroom and the smaller of the two bedrooms. Both were empty. The larger bedroom’s door was half-closed, and she crept closer. Taking a deep breath, she pushed it open as she knocked.

The double bed was empty.

In the dimness, she could see that the sheets were twisted into a knot. The blanket had been kicked onto the floor, and the pillows were rumpled, but Alan Francisco was not still lying there.

There was not much furniture in the room—just the bed, a bedside table and a dresser. The setup was Spartan. The top of his dresser held only a small pile of loose change. There were no personal items, no knickknacks, no souvenirs. The sheets on the bed were plain white, the blanket a light beige. The closet door hung open, as did one of the drawers in the modest-size dresser. Several duffel bags sagged nearby on the floor. The whole place had a rather apathetic feel, as if the person living here didn’t care enough to unpack, or to hang pictures on the wall and make the place his own.

There was nothing that gave any sense of personality to the resident of the room, with the exception of an enormous pile of dirty laundry that seemed to glower from one dark corner. That and a nearly empty bottle of whiskey standing on Frisco’s bedside table were the only telling things. And the bottle, at least, certainly told quite a bit. It was similar to the bottle he’d had outside last night—except that bottle had been nearly full.

No wonder Tasha hadn’t been able to wake him.

But eventually he had awakened and found the little girl gone. He was probably out searching for her right now, worried nearly out of his mind.

The best thing they could do was stay put. Eventually, Frisco would come back to see if Natasha had returned.

But the thought of hanging out in Frisco’s condo wasn’t extremely appealing. His belongings may have been impersonal to the point of distastefulness, but she felt as if by being there, she was invading his privacy.

Mia turned to leave when a gleam of reflected light from the closet caught her eye. She switched on the overhead light.

It was amazing. She’d never seen anything like it in her entire life. A naval uniform hung in the closet, bright white and crisply pressed. And on the upper left side of the jacket, were row after row after row after row of colorful medals. And above it—the cause of that reflected light—was a pin in the shape of an eagle, wings outspread, both a gun and a trident clasped in its fierce talons.

Mia couldn’t imagine the things Frisco had done to get all of those medals. But because there were so many of them, there was one thing that she suddenly did see quite clearly. Alan Francisco had a dedication to his job unlike anyone she’d ever met. These medals told her that as absolutely as if they could talk. If he had had one or two medals—sure, that would have told her he was a brave and capable soldier. But there had to be more than ten of these colorful bars pinned to his uniform. She counted them quickly with her finger. Ten…eleven. Eleven medals surely meant that Frisco had gone above and beyond the call of duty time after time.

She turned, and in the new light of her discovery, his bedroom had an entirely different look to it. Instead of being the room of a someone who didn’t care enough to add any personal touches, it became the room of a man who’d never taken the time to have a life outside of his dangerous career.

Even the whiskey bottle looked different. It looked far more sad and desperate than ever before.

And the room wasn’t entirely devoid of personal items. There was a book on the floor next to the bed. It was a collection of short stories by J. D. Salinger. Salinger. Who would’ve thought…?

“Mia?”

Natasha was calling her from the living room door.

Mia turned off the light on her way out of Frisco’s room. “I’m here, hon, but your uncle’s not,” she said, coming into the living room.

“He’s not?” Tasha scrambled to her feet to get out of the way of the opening screen door.

“What do you say we go next door and see about that bubble-bath soap of mine?” Mia continued, shutting the heavy wooden door to unit 2C tightly behind her. “I’ll write a note for your uncle so that he knows you’re at my place when he gets back.”

She’d call Thomas, too. If he was home, he might be willing to go out looking for the Navy lieutenant, to tell him Natasha was safe.

“Let’s go right into the bathroom,” Mia told Tasha as she opened her screen door and unlocked the dead bolt to her condo. “We’ll pop you directly into the tub, okay?”

Natasha hung back, her eyes very wide in her mud-streaked face. “Is Frisco gonna be mad at me?”

Mia gazed at the little girl. “Would you blame him very much if he was?”

Tasha’s face fell as she shook her head, her lips stretching into that unmistakable shape children’s mouths made when they were about to cry. “He was asleep.”

“Just because he’s sleeping doesn’t mean you can break his rules,” Mia told her.

“I was gonna come home before he woke up….”

Aha. Mia suddenly understood. Natasha’s mother had frequently slept off her alcoholic binges until well past noon, unknowing and perhaps even uncaring of her daughter’s private explorations. It was tantamount to neglect, and obviously Tasha expected the same treatment from Frisco.

Something was going to have to change.

“If I were you,” Mia advised her, “I’d be good and ready to say I’m sorry the moment Frisco gets home.”

FRISCO SAW THE note on his door from down in the courtyard. It was a pink piece of paper taped to the outside of the screen, and it lifted in the first stirrings of a late-morning breeze. He hurried up the stairs, ignoring the pain in his knee, and pulled the note from the door.

“Found Natasha,” it said in clean, bold printing. Thank God. He closed his eyes briefly, grateful beyond belief. He’d searched the beach for nearly an hour, terrified his niece had broken his rule and gone down to the ocean again. Hell, if she would break his rule about leaving the condo, she could just as well have broken his rule about never swimming alone.

He’d run into a lifeguard who’d told him he’d heard a rumor that a kid’s body had washed up on the beach early in the morning. Frisco’s heart had damn near stopped beating. He’d waited for nearly forty-five minutes at a pay phone, trying to get through to the shore patrol, trying to find out if the rumor was true.

It turned out that the body that had washed up in the surf had been that of a baby seal. And with that relief had come the knowledge that he’d wasted precious time. And the search had started again.

Frisco opened his eyes and found he had crumpled the pink paper. He smoothed it out to read the rest. “Found Natasha. We’re at my place. Mia.”

Mia Summerton. Saving the day again.

Leaning on his cane, he went toward Mia’s door, catching his reflection in his living room window. His hair was standing straight up, and he looked as if he were hiding from the sunlight behind his dark sunglasses. His T-shirt looked slept in, and his shorts were slept in. He looked like hell and he felt worse. His head had been pounding from the moment he’d stumbled out into the living room and found that Natasha was gone again. No, strike that. His head had been pounding from the moment he’d opened his eyes. It had risen to a nearly unbearable level when he’d discovered Tash was AWOL. It was still just shy of intolerable.

He rang the doorbell anyway, well aware that in addition to the not-so-pretty picture he made, he didn’t smell too damn good, either. His shirt reeked of a distillery. He hadn’t been too picky when he snatched it off the floor of his room this morning on his way out the door to search for Tash. Just his luck, he’d grabbed the one he’d used to mop up a spilled glass of whiskey last night.

The door swung open, and Mia Summerton stood there, looking like something out of a sailor’s fantasy. She was wearing running shorts that redefined the word short, and a midriff-baring athletic top that redefined the word lust. Her hair was back in a single braid, and still damp from perspiration.

“She’s here, she’s safe,” Mia said in way of greeting. “She’s in the tub, getting cleaned up.”

“Where did you find her?” His throat felt dry and his voice came out raspy and harsh.

Mia looked back into her condo unit and raised her voice. “How you doing in there, Tasha?”

“Fine,” came a cheery reply.

She opened the screen door and stepped outside. “Harris Avenue,” she told Frisco. “She was over on Harris Avenue, playing in the dirt at that construction site—”

“Dammit! What the hell does she think she’s doing? She’s five years old! She shouldn’t be walking around by herself or—God!—playing on a construction site!” Frisco ran one hand down his face, fighting to control his flare of anger. “I know that yelling at the kid’s not going to help….” He forced himself to lower his voice, to take a deep breath and try to release all of the frustration and anger and worry of the past several hours. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted. “She blatantly disobeyed my orders.”

“That’s not the way she sees it,” Mia told him.

“The rule was for her to tell me when she went outside. The rule was to stay in the courtyard.”

“In her opinion, all bets are off if Mom—or Uncle Frisco—can’t drag themselves out of bed in the morning.” Mia fixed him with her level gaze. Her eyes were more green than brown in the bright morning sun. “She told me she thought she’d be back before you even woke up.”

“A rule is a rule,” Frisco started.

“Yeah, and her rule,” Mia interrupted, “is that if you climb into a bottle, she’s on her own.”

Frisco’s headache intensified. He looked away, unable to meet her gaze. It wasn’t that she was looking at him accusingly. There was nothing even remotely accusative in her eyes. In fact, her eyes were remarkably gentle, softening the harshness of her words.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “That was uncalled for.”

He shook his head, uncertain as to whether he was agreeing with her or disagreeing with her.

“Why don’t you come inside?” Mia said, holding open the screen door for him.

Mia’s condo might as well have been from a different planet than his. It was spacious and open, with unspotted, light brown carpeting and white painted bamboo-framed furniture. The walls were freshly painted and clean, and potted plants were everywhere, their vines lacing across the ceiling on a system of hooks. Music played softly on the stereo. Frisco recognized the smoky Texas-blues-influenced vocals of Lee Roy Parnell.

Pictures hung on the wall—gorgeous blue and green watercolors of the ocean, and funky, quirkily colorful figures of people walking along the beach.

“My mother’s an artist,” Mia said, following his gaze. “Most of this is her work.”

Another picture was that of the beach before a storm. It conveyed all of the dangerous power of the wind and the water, the ominous, darkening sky, the rising surf, the palm trees whipped and tossed—nature at her most deadly.

“She’s good,” Frisco said.

Mia smiled. “I know.” She raised her voice. “How’s it going in bubbleland, Natasha?”

“Okay.”

“While she was out playing in the dirt, she gave herself a Russian princess mud bath.” With a wry smile, she led Frisco into the tiny kitchen. It was exactly like his—and nothing like his. Magnets of all shapes and sizes covered the refrigerator, holding up photos of smiling people, and notes and coupons and theater schedules. Fresh fruit hung in wire baskets that were suspended from hooks on the ceiling. A coffee mug in the shape of a cow wearing a graduate’s cap sat on the counter next to the telephone, holding pencils and pens. The entire room was filled with little bits and pieces of Mia. “I managed to convince her that true royalty always followed a mud bath with a bubble bath.”

“Bless you,” Frisco said. “And thank you for bringing her home.”

“It was lucky I ran that way.” Mia opened the refrigerator door. “I usually take a longer route, but I was feeling the heat this morning.” She looked up at Frisco. “Ice tea, lemonade or soda?”

“Something with caffeine, please,” Frisco told her.

“Hmm,” Mia said, reaching into the back of the fridge and pulling out a can of cola. She handed it to him. “And would you like that with two aspirin or three?”

Frisco smiled. It was crooked but it was a smile. “Three. Thanks.”

She motioned to the small table that was in the dining area at the end of the kitchen, and Frisco lowered himself into one of a pair of chairs. She had a napkin holder in the shape of a pig and tiny airplanes for salt and pepper shakers. There were plants everywhere in here, too, and a fragile wind chime directly over his head, in front of a window that looked out over the parking lot. He reached up and brushed the wind chime with one finger. It sounded as delicate and ghostly as it looked.

The doors to her kitchen cabinets had recently been replaced with light, blond wood. The gleaming white countertop looked new, too. But he only spared it half a glance, instead watching Mia as she stood on tiptoes to reach up into one of the cabinets for her bottle of aspirin. She was a blinding mixture of muscles and curves. He couldn’t look away, even when she turned around. Great, just what she needed. Some loser leering at her in her own kitchen. He could see her apprehension and discomfort in her eyes.

She set the bottle of aspirin down in front of him on the table and disappeared, murmuring some excuse about checking on Natasha.

Frisco pressed the cold soda can against his forehead. When Mia returned, she was wearing a T-shirt over her running gear. It helped, but not a lot.

He cleared his throat. A million years ago, he had been so good at small talk. “So…how far do you run?” Cripes, he sounded like some kind of idiot.

“Usually three miles,” she answered, opening the refrigerator again and taking out a pitcher of ice tea. She poured herself a glass. “But today I only went about two and a half.”

“You gotta be careful when it’s hot like this.” Man, could he sound any more lame? Lame? Yeah, that was the perfect word to describe him, in more ways than one.

She nodded, turning to look at him as she leaned back against the kitchen counter and took a sip of her tea.

“So…your mother’s an artist.”

Mia smiled. Damn, she had a beautiful smile. Had he really thought that it was goofy-looking just two days ago?

“Yeah,” she said. “She has a studio near Malibu. That’s where I grew up.”

Frisco nodded. This was where he was supposed to counter by telling her where he came from. “I grew up right here in San Felipe, the armpit of California.”

Her smile deepened. “Armpits have their purpose—not that I agree with you and think that San Felipe is one.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion,” he said with a shrug. “To me, San Felipe will always be an armpit.”

“So sell your condo and move to Hawaii.”

“Is that where your family’s from?” he asked.

She looked down into her glass. “To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure. I think I must have some Hawaiian or Polynesian blood, but I’m not certain.”

“Your parents don’t know?”

“I was adopted from an overseas agency. The records were extremely sketchy.” She looked up at him. “I went through a phase, you know, when I tried to find my birth parents.”

“Birth parents aren’t always worth finding. I would’ve been better off without knowing mine.”

“I’m sorry,” Mia said quietly. “There was a time when I might’ve said that you can’t possibly mean that, or that that couldn’t possibly be true. But I’ve been teaching at an urban high school for over five years, and I’m well aware that most people didn’t have the kind of childhood or the kind of parents that I did.” Her eyes were a beautiful mixture of brown and green and compassion. “I don’t know what you might have gone through, but…I am sorry.”

“I’ve heard that teaching high school is a pretty dangerous job these days, what with guns and drugs and violence,” Frisco said, trying desperately to bring the conversation out of this dark and ultrapersonal area. “Did they give you any special kind of commando training when you took the job?”

Mia laughed. “No, we’re on our own. Thrown to the wolves naked, so to speak. Some of the teachers have compensated by becoming real drill sergeants. I’ve found that positive reinforcement works far better than punishment.” She took another sip of her ice tea, gazing at him speculatively over the top of her glass. “In fact, you might want to consider that when you’re dealing with Natasha.”

Frisco shook his head. “What? Give her a cookie for running away? I don’t think so.”

“But what kind of punishment will possibly get through to her?” Mia persisted. “Think about it. The poor kid’s already been given the ultimate punishment for a five-year-old—her mommy’s gone. There’s probably nothing else that you can take away from her that will matter. You can yell at her and make her cry. You can even frighten her and make her afraid of you, and maybe even give her worse nightmares. But if you reward her when she does follow your rules, if you make a really big deal about it and make her feel as if she’s worth a million bucks, well, she’ll catch on much more quickly.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “But I can’t just ignore what she did this morning.”

“It’s difficult,” Mia admitted. “You have to achieve a balance between letting a child know her behavior is unacceptable, and not wanting to reward the child’s bad behavior by giving her too much attention. Kids who crave attention often misbehave. It’s the easiest way to get a parent or teacher to notice them.”

Frisco pushed his mouth up into another smile. “I know some so-called grown-ups who operate on the same principle.”

Mia gazed at the man sitting at her kitchen table. It was amazing. He looked as if he’d been rolled from a park bench, yet she still found him attractive. What would he look like, she wondered, shiny clean and dressed in that uniform she’d found in his closet?

He’d probably look like someone she’d go out of her way to avoid. She’d never been impressed by men in uniform. It wasn’t likely that she’d be impressed now.

Still, all those medals…

Mia set her empty glass down and pushed herself off the counter. “I’ll get Tasha out of the tub,” she told Frisco. “You probably have things to do—she told me you promised to take her shopping for furniture for her bedroom.”

“Yeah.” Frisco nodded and pulled himself clumsily to his feet. “Thanks again for bringing her home.”

Mia smiled and slipped down the hall toward the bathroom. Considering their rocky start, they’d actually achieved quite a nice, neighborly relationship.

Nice and neighborly—that’s exactly where they were going to leave it, too. Despite the fact that this man had the ability to make her blood heat with a single look, despite the fact that she genuinely liked him more and more each time they met, she was going to be careful to keep her distance.

Because the more Mia found out about her neighbor, the more she was convinced that they were absolute polar opposites.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT WAS PINK. It was definitely, undeniably pink. Its back was reminiscent of a scallop shell, and its arms were scrolled. Its cushions were decorated with shiny silver buttons that absolutely, positively could not have been comfortable to sit upon.

It was far too fancy to be called a couch or even a sofa. It was advertised as a “settee.”

For Natasha, it was love at first sight.

Fortunately for Frisco, she didn’t spot it until they were on their way out of the furniture store.

She sat down on it and went into Russian princess mode. Frisco was so tired, and his knee and head ached so badly, he sat down, too.

“Kneel in front of the Russian princess,” Tash commanded him sternly.

Frisco put his head back and closed his eyes. “Not a chance, babe,” he mumbled.

After Tash’s bath at Mia’s place, he’d taken her home, then they’d both suited up and headed to the beach for the kid’s first swimming lesson. The current had still been quite strong, and he’d kept his fingers solidly locked on Tash’s bathing suit the entire time.

The kid was fearless. Considering that she hadn’t even seen the ocean before yesterday, she was entirely enthusiastic about the water. At the end of the week, she’d be well on her way to swimming like a fish.

Frisco shook his head. How on earth had Sharon’s kid managed to live to the ripe old age of five without having even seen the ocean? Historically, the Franciscos were coastline people. His old man had worked on a fishing boat for years. Vacations were spent at the water. Frisco and his two older brothers had loved the beach. But not Sharon, he remembered suddenly. Sharon had damn near drowned when she was hardly any older than Natasha was now. As an adult, Sharon moved inland, spending much of her time in Las Vegas and Reno. Tash had been born in Tucson, Arizona. Not much beachfront property there.

After the swimming lesson and a forty-five-minute lecture on why Tash had to follow Frisco’s rules, they’d dragged themselves home, had lunch, changed and gone shopping for furniture for Frisco’s second bedroom.

They’d found this particular store in the Yellow Pages. It was right around the corner, and—the advertisement boasted—it had free, same-day delivery. Frisco had picked out a simple mattress, box spring and metal-framed bed, and Tash had chosen a pint-size bright yellow chest of drawers. Together, they’d found a small desk and chair and a petite bookshelf.

“Can we get this, Frisco?” Tash now asked hopefully.

He snorted as he opened his eyes. “A pink couch? Man, are you kidding?”

As usual, she answered his rhetorical question as if he’d asked it seriously. “No.”

“Where the hell would we put it?” He glanced at the price tag. It was supposedly on sale, marked down to a mere small fortune.

“We could put it where that other icky one is.”

“Great. Just what that condo needs.” Shaking his head, Frisco pulled himself to his feet. “Come on. If we don’t hurry, the delivery truck is going to beat us home. We don’t want them to deliver your new furniture to some other kid.”

That got Tasha moving, but not without one final lovelorn glance at the pink sofa.

They were only two blocks from home, but Frisco flagged down a cab. The sun was merciless, and his knee was damn near making him scream with pain. His head wasn’t feeling too great, either.

There was no sign of Mia out in her garden in the condo courtyard. Her door was tightly shut, and Frisco found himself wondering where she had gone.

Bad mistake, he told himself. She had been making it clear that she didn’t want to be anything more than a neighbor. She didn’t want the likes of him sniffing around her door.

Mia actually thought he was a drunk, like his old man and his sister. It was entirely possible that if he wasn’t careful, she would be proven right.

No more, he vowed, pulling himself up the stairs. Tonight, if insomnia struck, he’d tough it out. He’d face the demons who were at their ugliest in the wee hours of the morning by spitting in their faces. If he awoke in the middle of the night, he’d spend the time working out, doing exercises that would strengthen his leg and support his injured knee.

He unlocked the door to his condo and Tasha went inside first, dashing through the living room and down the hall to the bedrooms.

Frisco followed more slowly, each painful step making him grit his teeth. He needed to sit down and get his weight off his knee, elevate the damn thing and ice the hell out of it.

Tasha was in her bedroom, lying down on the wall-to-wall carpeting. She was flat on her back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.

As Frisco stood in the doorway and watched, she scrambled to her feet and then lay down on the floor in another part of the room.

“What are you doing?” he asked as she did the exact same thing yet a third time.

“I’m picking where to put the bed,” Tash told him from her position on the floor.

Frisco couldn’t hide his smile. “Good idea,” he said. “Why don’t you work on that for a while? I’m gonna chill for a few minutes before the delivery truck comes, okay?”

“’Kay.”

He headed back into the kitchen and grabbed an ice pack from the freezer. He moved into the living room and sat on his old plaid couch, swinging his injured leg up and onto the cushions. The ice felt good, and he put his head back and closed his eyes.

He had to figure out a way to move those boxes out of Tash’s room. There were a half a dozen of them, and they were all too ungainly for him to carry with only one arm. But he could drag ’em, though. That would work. He could use a blanket or sheet, and wrestle the boxes on top of it, one at a time. With the box firmly trapped in the sheet like a fish in a fishing net, he could pull the sheet, sliding the box along the rug out of Tash’s room and into his own and…

Frisco held his breath. He’d sensed more than heard the movement of Tasha crossing the living room floor, but now he heard the telltale squeak of the front door being opened.

He opened his eyes and sat up, but she was already out the door.

“Natasha! Damn it!”

His cane had slipped underneath the couch and he scrambled for it, grabbing it and moving quickly to the door.

“Tash!”

He supported himself on the railing near his rope and pulley setup. Natasha looked up at him from the courtyard, eyes wide. “Where the hell are you going?” he growled.

“To see if Thomas is home.”

She didn’t get it. Frisco could tell just from looking at the little girl that she honestly didn’t understand why he was upset with her.

He took a deep breath and forced his racing pulse to slow. “You forgot to tell me where you were going.”

“You were asleep.”

“No, I wasn’t. And even if I was, that doesn’t mean you can just break the rules.”

She was silent, gazing up at him.

Frisco went down the stairs. “Come here.” He gestured with his head toward one of the courtyard benches. He sat down and she sat next to him. Her feet didn’t touch the ground, and she swung them back and forth. “Do you know what a rule is?” he asked.

Tasha chewed on her lower lip. She shook her head.

“Take a guess,” Frisco told her. “What’s a rule?”

“Something you want me to do that I don’t want to do?” she asked.

It took all that he had in him not to laugh. “It’s more than that,” he said. “It’s something that you have to do, whether or not you want to. And it’s always the same, whether I’m asleep or awake.”

She didn’t get it. He could see her confusion and disbelief written clearly on her face.

He ran one hand down his face, trying to clear his cobweb-encrusted mind. He was tired. He couldn’t think how to explain to Natasha that she had to follow his rules all of the time. He couldn’t figure out how to get through to her.

“Hi, guys.”

Frisco looked up to see Mia Summerton walking toward them. She was wearing a summery, sleeveless, flower-print dress with a long, sweeping skirt that reached almost all the way to the ground. She had sandals on her feet and a large-brimmed straw hat on her head and a friendly smile on her pretty face. She looked cool and fresh, like a long-awaited evening breeze in the suffocating late-afternoon heat.

Where had she been, all dressed up like that? On a lunch date with some boyfriend? Or maybe she wasn’t coming, maybe she was going. Maybe she was waiting for her dinner date to arrive. Lucky bastard. Frisco scowled, letting himself hate the guy, allowing himself that small luxury.

“There’s a furniture truck unloading in the driveway,” Mia said, ignoring his dark look. In fact, she was ignoring him completely. She spoke directly to Tash. “Does that pretty yellow dresser belong to you, by any chance?”

Natasha jumped up, their conversation all but forgotten. “Me,” she said, dashing toward the parking lot. “It belongs to me!”

“Don’t run too far ahead,” Frisco called out warningly, pulling himself to his feet. He tightened his mouth as he put his weight on his knee, resisting the urge to wince, not wanting to show Mia how much he was hurting. “And do not step off that sidewalk.”

But Mia somehow knew. “Are you all right?” she asked him, no longer ignoring him, her eyes filled with concern. She followed him after Natasha, back toward the parking lot.

“I’m fine,” he said brusquely.

“Have you been chasing around after her all day?”

“I’m fine,” he repeated.

“You’re allowed to be tired,” she said with a musical laugh. “I babysat a friend’s four-year-old last week, and I practically had to be carried out on a stretcher afterward.”

Frisco glanced at her. She gazed back at him innocently. She was giving him an out, pretending that the lines of pain and fatigue on his face were due to the fact that he wasn’t used to keeping up with the high energy of a young child, rather than the result of his old injury. “Yeah, right.”

Mia knew better than to show her disappointment at Frisco’s terse reply. She wanted to be this man’s friend, and she’d assumed they’d continue to build a friendship on the shaky foundation they’d recently established. But whatever understanding they’d reached this morning seemed to have been forgotten. The old, angry, tight-lipped Frisco had returned with a vengeance.

Unless…

It was possible his knee was hurting worse than she thought.

A delivery man approached. “You Alan Francisco?” he asked, not waiting for a reply before he held out his clipboard. “Sign at the X.”

Frisco signed. “It’s going up to Unit 2C. It’s right at the top of the stairs—”

“Sorry, pal, this is as far as I go.” The man didn’t sound even remotely apologetic. “My instructions are to get it off the truck. You’ve got to take it from here.”

“You’re kidding.” Frisco’s voice was flat, unbelieving. The furniture was standing there on the asphalt, next to the delivery vehicle.

The man closed the sliding back door of his truck with a crash. “Read the small print on your receipt. It’s free delivery—and you got exactly what you paid for.”

How was Frisco supposed to get all this up a flight of stairs? Mia saw the frustration and anger in his eyes and in the tight set of his mouth.

The man climbed into the cab and closed the door behind him.

“I bought this stuff from your store because you advertise a free delivery,” Frisco said roughly. “If you’re not going to deliver it, you can damn well load it up and take it back.”

“First of all, it’s not my store,” the man told him, starting the engine with a roar and grinding the gears as he put it into first, “and secondly, you already signed for it.”

It was all Frisco could do to keep himself from pulling himself up on the running board and slamming his fist into the man’s surly face. But Tash and Mia were watching him. So he did nothing. He stood there like a damned idiot as the truck pulled away.

He stared after it, feeling helpless and impotent and frustrated beyond belief.

And then Mia touched his arm. Her fingers felt cool against his hot skin. Her touch was hesitant and light, but she didn’t pull away even when he turned to glare down at her.

“I sent Tasha to see if Thomas is home,” she said quietly. “We’ll get this upstairs.”

“I hate this,” he said. The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. They were dripping with despair and shame. He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, to reveal so much of himself to her. It wasn’t a complaint, or even self-pity. It was a fact. He hated his limitations.

Her brown-green eyes grew warmer, more liquid. She slid her hand all the way down to his, and intertwined their fingers. “I know,” she said huskily. “I’m so sorry.”

He turned to look at her then, to really look at her. “You don’t even like me,” he said. “How can you stand to be so nice?”

“I do like you,” she said, trying to step back, away from the intensity of his gaze. But he wouldn’t let go of her hand. “I want to be your friend.”

Friend. She tugged again, and this time he released her. She wanted to be his friend. He wanted so much more….

“Yo, Frisco!”

Frisco turned. The voice was as familiar to him as breathing. It was Lucky O’Donlon. He’d parked his motorcycle in one of the visitor’s spaces, and now sauntered toward them. He was wearing his blue dress uniform and looked to be one hundred percent spit and polish. Frisco knew better.

“Hey, guy, having a tag sale or something?” Lucky’s wide smile and warm blue eyes traveled lazily over the furniture, Frisco’s damned cane, and Mia. He took an especially long time taking in Mia. “You gonna introduce me to your friend?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Lucky held out his hand to Mia. “I’m Lt. Luke O’Donlon, U.S. Navy SEALs. And you are…?”

Mia smiled. Of course she would smile. No one could resist Lucky. “Mia Summerton. I’m Frisco’s neighbor.”

“I’m his swim buddy.”

“Former swim buddy.”

Lucky shook his head. “No such thing.” He looped his arm around Frisco’s neck and smiled at Mia. “We went through BUD/S together. That makes you swim buddies for life.”

“BUD/S is basic training for SEALs,” Frisco translated for her, pushing Lucky away from him. “Where are you going, dressed like that?”

“Some kind of semiformal affair at the OC. A shindig for some top brass pencil pusher who’s being promoted.” He grinned at Frisco, but his gaze kept returning to Mia. “I thought maybe you’d want to come along.”

Frisco snorted. “Dream on, man. I hated those parties when I was required to go.”

“Please?” Lucky begged. “I need someone to keep me company or I’ll spend all night dancing with the admiral’s wife, trying to keep her from grabbing my butt.” He smiled at Mia and winked.

“Even if I wanted to,” Frisco told him, “which I don’t, I couldn’t. I’m taking care of my sister’s kid for the next six weeks.” He gestured to the furniture. “This is supposed to be for her bedroom.”

“The kid’s either fond of the outdoors, or you got yourself some kind of snafu here.”

“Number two,” Frisco said.

“Yo, neighbor babe,” Lucky said, picking up one end of the mattress. “You look healthy. Grab the other end.”

“Her name is Mia,” Frisco said.

“Excuse me,” Lucky said. “Mia babe, grab the other end.”

Mia was laughing, thank God. As Frisco watched, she and Lucky carried the mattress into the courtyard. He could hear Mia’s laughter long after they moved out of sight.

As Frisco picked up the lightweight bookcase and carried it slowly toward the courtyard, he could also hear Tasha’s excited chirping, and Thomas King’s rich voice coming toward him.

“Hey, Navy.” Thomas nodded a greeting as he passed. He knew better than to offer to take the bookcase from Frisco on his way out to the parking lot.

“Thanks for helping out, man,” Frisco said to him.

“No problem,” the teenager replied.

No problem. It was possible that this whole deal wasn’t a problem for anybody—except Frisco.

He set the bookcase down at the bottom of the stairs, and looked up to see Lucky come out of his condo, with Tasha in his arms. He was tickling the little girl, and she was giggling. Mia was right behind them, and she was laughing, too.

He’d never seen Mia look so beautiful or relaxed. Lucky leaned toward her and said something into her ear, and she laughed again. She started down the stairs, and Lucky watched her go, his eyes following the movement of her hips.

Frisco had to look away. He couldn’t blame Lucky. At one time, the two of them had been so much alike. They still were alike in so many ways. It didn’t surprise him that his best friend would be attracted to Mia, too.

It took all of ten minutes to transport Tasha’s furniture into her bedroom and to move the boxes that were in there into Frisco’s room.

Thomas headed off to work, and Mia made her excuses and disappeared into her condo—after smiling at the big deal Lucky made out of shaking her hand once again.

“She, uh, said you guys were just friends, huh?” Lucky said much too casually as Frisco walked him to his bike.

Frisco was silent, wondering what he could possibly say to that statement. If he agreed, then Lucky would be dropping by all the time, asking Mia out, working his famous O’Donlon charm and persistence until she gave in. And she would give in. No one could resist Lucky. And then Frisco would have to watch as his best friend dated and probably seduced this woman that he wanted so badly.

It was true. He wanted Mia. And dammit, he was going to do everything in his power to get her.

“She’s wrong,” he told Lucky. “We’re more than friends. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

If Lucky was disappointed, he hid it well. And it didn’t take long for his disappointment to turn into genuine pleasure. “This is great. This means you’re coming back,” he said.

“To the SEALs?” Frisco shook his head. “Man, haven’t you heard, I’m—”

“No,” Lucky interrupted. “I meant to the world of the living.”

Frisco gazed at his friend. He didn’t understand. He was alive. He’d had five years of pain and frustration to prove that.

“Call me sometime,” Lucky said, strapping on his motorcycle helmet. “I miss you, man.”

FRISCO AWOKE TO the sound of an electronic buzzer. It was loud as hell and it was right in his ear and…

He sat up, wide-awake.

It was the sound of the booby trap he’d rigged to the front door last night before he went to bed. Tasha was AWOL again, dammit.

He pulled on a pair of shorts as he rolled out of bed, and grabbed his cane from the floor.

Oh, Lord, he was tired. He may have gone to bed last night, but he hadn’t gone to sleep. It couldn’t have been more than two hours ago that he’d finally closed his eyes. But he’d done it. He’d stared down the night without even a sip of whiskey to help him along.

He may have been exhausted, but he wasn’t hung over.

And that was damn good, because if he had been, the sound of this blasted buzzer would have taken the top of his head clear off.

He quickly disconnected it. It was a simple system, designed for the circuit to break if the door was open. If the circuit was broken, the buzzer would sound.

He pulled the door the rest of the way open and…

Tasha, with Mia directly behind her, stood on the other side of the screen door.

Tash was still wearing her pajamas. Mia was wearing her bathing suit underneath a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Frisco could see the brightly colored strap that tied up and around her neck.

“Good morning,” she said.

Frisco glared at Tash. “Where the h—”

Mia cut him off. “Tasha was coming over to visit me,” she told Frisco, “but she remembered that she was supposed to tell you first where she was going.” She looked down at the little girl. “Right, Tash?” Tasha nodded.

Tasha remembered? Mia remembered was more like it.

Mia mouthed “Positive reinforcement” over Tasha’s head.

Frisco swallowed his frustration. All right. If Mia thought he could get through to Tasha this way, he’d give it a shot. Somehow he mustered up far more enthusiasm than he felt. “Excellent job remembering,” he said to the little girl, opening the screen door and letting both Tasha and Mia inside.

He forced himself to smile, and Natasha visibly brightened. Jeez, maybe there was something to this.

He scooped the little girl into his arms and awkwardly spun her around until she began to giggle, then collapsed with her onto the couch. “In fact,” he continued, “you are so amazingly excellent, I think you should probably get a medal. Don’t you?”

She nodded, her eyes wide. “What’s a medal?”

“It’s a very special pin that you get for doing something really great—like remembering my rules,” Frisco told her. He dumped her off his lap and onto the soft cushions of the couch. “Wait right here—I’ll get it.”

Mia was standing near the door, and as she watched, Frisco pushed himself off the couch and headed down the hall to his bedroom.

“Getting a medal is a really big deal.” Frisco raised his voice so they could hear him in the living room. “It requires a very special ceremony.”

Tasha was bouncing up and down on the couch, barely able to contain her excitement. Mia had to smile. It seemed that Frisco understood the concept of positive reinforcement.

“Here we go,” he said, coming back into the living room. He caught Mia’s eye and smiled. He looked like hell this morning. He looked more exhausted than she’d ever seen him. He’d clearly been sound asleep mere moments ago. But somehow he seemed more vibrant, his eyes more clear. And the smile that he’d sent her was remarkably sweet, almost shy.

Mia’s heart was in her throat as she watched him with his little niece.

“For the remarkable remembering of my rules and regs, including rule number one—‘Tell Frisco where you’re going before you leave the condo,’” he intoned, “I award Natasha Francisco this medal of honor.”

He pinned one of the colorful bars Mia had seen attached to his dress uniform onto Tasha’s pajama shirt.

“Now I salute you and you salute me,” he whispered to the little girl after he attached the pin.

He stood at sharp attention, and snapped a salute. Tasha imitated him remarkably well.

“The only time SEALs ever salute is when someone gets a medal,” Frisco said with another glance in Mia’s direction. He pulled Tasha back to the couch with him. “Here’s the deal,” he told her. “In order to keep this medal, you have to remember my rules all day today. Do you remember the rules?”

“Tell you when I want to go outside….”

“Even when I’m asleep. You have to wake me up, okay? And what else?”

“Stay here….”

“In the courtyard, right. And…?”

“No swimming without my buddy.”

“Absolutely, incredibly correct. Gimme a high five.”

Natasha giggled, slapping hands with her uncle.

“Here’s the rest of the deal,” he said. “Are you listening, Tash?”

She nodded.

“When you get enough of these medals, you know what happens?”

Tasha shook her head no.

“We trade this thing in,” Frisco told her, smacking the back of the couch they were sitting on with one hand, “for a certain pink sofa.”

Mia thought it was entirely possible that the little girl was going to explode with pleasure.

“You’re going to have to work really hard to follow the rules,” Frisco was telling her. “You’ve got to remember that the reason I want you to obey these rules is because I want you to be safe, and it really gets me upset when I don’t know for certain that you’re safe. You have to think about that and remember that, because I know you don’t want to make me feel upset, right?”

Tasha nodded. “Do you have to follow my rules?”

Frisco was surprised, but he hid it well. “What are your rules?”

“No more bad words,” the little girl said without hesitation.

Frisco glanced up at Mia again, chagrin in his eyes. “Okay,” he said, looking back at Tasha. “That’s a tough one, but I’ll try.”

“More playing with Mia,” Tasha suggested.

He laughed nervously. “I’m not sure we can make that a rule, Tash. I mean, things that concern you and me are fine, but…”

“I’d love to play with you,” Mia murmured.

Frisco glanced up at her. She couldn’t possibly have meant that the way it sounded. No, she was talking to Natasha. Still… He let his imagination run with the scenario. It was a very, very good one.

“But we don’t have to make a rule about it,” Mia added.

“Can you come to the beach with us for my swimming lesson?” Tasha asked her.

Mia hesitated, looking cautiously across the room at Frisco. “I don’t want to get in the way.”

“You’ve already got your bathing suit on,” he pointed out.

She seemed surprised that he’d noticed. “Well, yes, but…”

“Were you planning to go to a different beach?”

“No… I just don’t want to…you know…” She shrugged and smiled apologetically, nervously. “Interfere.”

“It wouldn’t be interfering,” Frisco told her. Man, he felt as nervous as she sounded. When had this gotten so hard? He used to be so good at this sort of thing. “Tasha wants you to come with us.” Perfect. Now he sounded as if he wanted her to come along as a playmate for his niece. That wasn’t it at all. “And I…I do, too,” he added.

Jeez, his heart was in his mouth. He swallowed, trying to make it go back where it belonged as Mia just gazed at him.

“Well, okay,” she finally said. “In that case, I’d love to come. If you want, I could pack a picnic lunch…?”

“Yeah!” Tasha squealed, hopping around the room. “A picnic! A picnic!”

Frisco felt himself smile. A picnic on the beach with Mia. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt such anticipation. And his anticipation was for more than his wanting to see what her bathing suit looked like, although he was feeling plenty of that, too. “I guess that’s a yes. But it shouldn’t be just up to you to bring the food.”

“I’ll make sandwiches,” Mia told him, opening the door. “You guys bring something to drink. Soda. Or beer if you want it.”

“No beer,” Frisco said.

She paused, looking back at him, her hand on the handle of the screen door.

“It’s another one of the rules I’m going to be following from now on,” he said quietly. Natasha had stopped dancing around the room. She was listening, her eyes wide. “No more drinking. Not even beer.”

Mia stepped away from the door, her eyes nearly as wide as Tasha’s. “Um, Tash, why don’t you go put on your bathing suit?”

Silently Tasha vanished down the hallway.

Frisco shook his head. “It’s not that big a deal.”

Mia clearly thought otherwise. She stepped closer to him, lowering her voice for privacy from Tasha’s sensitive ears. “You know, there are support groups all over town. You can find a meeting at virtually any time of day—”

Did she honestly think his drinking was that serious a problem? “Look, I can handle this,” he said gruffly. “I went overboard for a couple of days, but that’s all it was. I didn’t drink at all while I was in the hospital—right up ’til two days ago. These past few days—you haven’t exactly been seeing me at my best.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean to imply…”

“It’s no big deal.”

She touched his arm, her fingers gentle and cool and so soft against his skin. “Yes, it is,” she told him. “To Natasha, it’s a very big deal.”

“I’m not doing it for Tash,” he said quietly, looking down at her delicate hand resting on the corded muscles of his forearm, wishing she would leave it there, but knowing she was going to pull away. “I’m doing it for myself.”

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.

Another, smaller man would’ve been knocked out, but Dwayne was like one of those pop-up punching bag dolls. He just kept coming. The son of a bitch went for his knee again. There was no way he could miss, and again pain ripped into Frisco like a freight train. He grabbed hold of Dwayne’s head and slammed it back against the sidewalk.

There were sirens in the distance—Frisco heard them through waves of nausea and dizziness. The police were coming.

Dwayne should have been out for the count, but he scrambled up and onto his feet.

“You tell Sharon I want that money back,” he said through bruised and bleeding lips before he limped away.

Frisco tried to go after him, but his knee crumbled beneath his weight, sending another wave of searing pain blasting through him. He felt himself retch and he pressed his cheek against the sidewalk to make the world stop spinning.

A crowd had gathered, he suddenly realized. Someone pushed through the mob, running toward him. He tensed, moving quickly into a defensive position.

“Yo, Lieutenant! Whoa, back off, Navy, it’s me, Thomas.”

It was. It was Thomas. The kid crouched down next to Frisco on the sidewalk. “Who ran you over with a truck? My God…” Thomas stood up again, looking into the crowd. “Hey, someone call an ambulance for my friend! Now!”

Frisco reached for Thomas.

“Yeah, I’m here, man. I’m here, Frisco. I saw this big guy running away—he looked only a little bit better than you do,” Thomas told him. “What happened? You make some kind of uncalled-for fat joke?”

“Mia,” Frisco rasped. “She’s got Natasha…at the deli. Stay with them…make sure they’re okay.”

“You’re the one who looks like you need help—”

“I’m fine,” Frisco ground out between clenched teeth. “If you won’t go to them, I will.” He searched for his cane. Where the hell was his cane? It was in the street. He crawled toward it, dragging his injured leg.

“God,” Thomas said. His eyes were wide in amazement that Frisco could even move. For once he actually looked only eighteen years old. “You stay here, I’ll go find them. If it’s that important to you…”

“Run,” Frisco told him.

Thomas ran.

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