Freefall (17 page)

Swannsea was not a small house. By the time Zach and Nate, who showed up less than five minutes after Zach, finished searching every room, Sabrina had cleaned the blood off her foot, put some antiseptic on it, and covered the cut with a Band-Aid she'd found in a first-aid kit beneath the sink.

"I thought I told you to stay put," Zach said between his teeth.

"I thought I told you I'm not very good at taking orders." Not nearly as good as he seemed to be about issuing them. "Besides, the cut wasn't any big deal. It was only a sliver of glass and easily taken care of. Since I didn't hear gunfire, can I assume neither of you found a maniac killer hiding in closet?"

"No," Nate said. "Whoever he was, he's long gone. The logical explanation is that it was someone looking to make a quick buck selling some of your grandmother's stuff. But what bothers me is that he didn't take some of the more expensive, easy-to-fence items. Like the laptop, or the camera that was in one of the desk drawers."

Nate skimmed his hand over his short hair. "Do you know of anyone who'd have a grudge against you?"

"I can't imagine who. I've only been home a little over a day," she said.

"There's Sumner," Zach said.

"What about him?"

Nate changed in front of Sabrina's eyes from the reassuring man who'd shown up at the house to a no-nonsense, take-charge sheriff. Observing those sharp, hard, dark eyes, she could easily imagine him as a Marine.

"It's nothing. Not really," she insisted, as Zach looked ready to argue. "He dropped by wanting to talk with me about buying Swannsea farm. I told him it wasn't for sale. End of story."

"That you know of," Zach pointed out. "The guy's always been a weasel. It'd be just like him to try to scare you out."

"That's ridiculous," Sabrina scoffed. Then she noticed that Nate didn't exactly jump in to back her up. "Isn't it?" she asked the sheriff.

"Probably," he said. But she could tell he was considering the idea. "I'm still going to want to come back and dust for prints tomorrow."

Sabrina wondered if he was planning to compare them with any prints he might have found in that murdered woman's house. Wasn't that a comforting thought?

"I'm starting to feel as if I fell down the rabbit hole when that bomb went off," she admitted.

"Give it time." Zach glanced out over the moon-silvered landscape, as if still watching for bad guys. "And you don't need to worry about being alone tonight. Because you won't be."

"You're staying?"

He exchanged a look with Nate. "A hoard of vandals couldn't drag me away."

"You've made your point. I'll definitely lock all the doors from now on."

"Locks are only a first deterrent," Zach said. "There's not one made that a determined thief can't get past. The locks on this place would be a breeze. I could probably bust them in under two seconds."

"I'm not sure I should've heard that," Nate said mildly. He turned to Sabrina. "He has a point. You can replace them in the morning. Meanwhile, it's better to be safe than sorry."

Sabrina watched Zach walk the sheriff out to his SUV. Even as they talked, they both scanned the property, every muscle in their bodies seeming on red alert. They might have left the service, but it was obvious that both were warriors still.

Understanding for the first time why her grandmother had always believed there was nothing a stout cup of tea couldn't fix, Sabrina put on a kettle.

"I'm making tea," she said when Zach returned to the kitchen. "Would you like some?"

"Sure."

She took two Earl Grey tea bags from a wooden box on the counter and placed them in a pair of cups she took from a glass-fronted cabinet. "And while we're waiting for the water to boil, you can tell me what happened in Afghanistan."

"Like I said. It's late." Seeming uncomfortable, he took the kettle, which had begun to whistle, from the range and poured the boiling water over the bags. "And it's not exactly a bedtime story.

"But I
can
tell you that I thought about you." He held one of the cups toward her. It looked very small in his large dark hand. "A lot, actually."

"Right." She perched on one of the stools at the island counter. "Like I'd made such an impression on you during all those summers I spent on the island."

"Maybe not all those years," he allowed. "But you definitely got my attention that last night. When you came to my apartment over Gus's gas station and offered yourself to me—"

"Oh, God." She felt the blush rise in her cheeks. "I was hoping you'd slept with so many women over the years, you would've forgotten that."

"Yeah, you'd think that, wouldn't you?"

He sounded a bit surprised himself, though Sabrina couldn't help noticing that he didn't contradict her about all those women he'd gone to bed with.

"I even wondered about that a few times. Usually when the team would find ourselves in a shit sandwich." He grimaced. "Sorry, that's sort of a military term—"

"I get the gist. And I've heard a lot more, most recently from a hot-tempered sous-chef I had to fire, who could curse in four languages, so it'd take a lot more than that to offend me."

"Okay. Anyway, although I'm sorry as hell to have brought it up, for some reason I'd think back on you, so neat and clean and tidy." Which was definitely not the memory she'd intended to leave him with.

He leaned back against the opposite counter, facing her as he crossed his long legs at the ankles. "Did I ever tell you how, every time I saw you, I wanted to mess you up?"

"No. But that's a bit of a revelation, since at the time I hadn't realized you'd seen me at all. Except to be really, really annoyed that time your dad took me fishing with the two of you."

"Yeah. I was majorly pissed." His lips quirked as he remembered. "Especially when you whimpered like a girl when you had to touch that night crawler."

"I
was
a girl." She'd been eight. "And it was slimy."

"If you didn't want to bait a hook, you shouldn't have whined to come along."

"I didn't whine. Well, maybe a little," she amended at his sideways look. "But how was I supposed to know catching fish involved worms?"

His father had baited the hook for her, Sabrina recalled. Then helped her pull in the six-inch shark that had gotten itself hooked.

She also remembered her relief when John Tremayne put it back into the water.

"Point taken. I guess, when you put it that way, you were pretty much a fish out of water, so to speak."

"Anyone ever tell you that your jokes are, well, a little lame?"

"Not and lived to tell about it."

Despite what Brad had said about Zach being dangerous, she didn't believe that.

"Getting back to my point, there'd be times, when we'd be out on some mission and for some reason I'd think about you looking all clean and white, and well, I guess 'pure' would be the best word, and I'd remember what I was fighting for."

How on earth did a woman respond to such a statement? "That's very flattering."

He shrugged. "It's the truth. In some weird way I never bothered to think about it all that much, because I was afraid if I overanalyzed it, you'd vanish, like a hot dream you lose when you wake up. And I wouldn't be able to get you back."

Sabrina wondered if, just possibly,
this
could be a dream.

Stalling, she took another sip of the light golden tea, savoring the bright taste. Unlike many competitors, who used the bergamot orange oil to mask the lack of flavor from inferior, less-expensive black tea in their Earl Grey blends, Swann Tea had always used only the most select leaves from bushes grown here on the farm.

A farm she vowed Brad Sumner would never get his hands on.

"I thought soldiers fought for the guys in the foxhole on either side of him."

"That's when the bullets are flying. When you're hauling your ass up some godforsaken mountain in some shithole of a place in the middle of winter, when you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys, and most of both of those groups think
you're
the bad guy, which puts a big target on your back, it helps to have something larger to focus on.

"Guys with families have it harder in one way, because they have more to worry about back home while they're away. But they also have it easier in another way, because they're not just fighting for the flag and apple pie, but for their wives and kids.

"I had you in your spotless white dresses and long blond Alice in Wonderland hair. I know it sounds like I was smoking some really crazy shit, but you came to symbolize innocence. What the world could be if people in charge didn't keep fucking it up with their power trips."

"Since you're the one who brought it up," she murmured, "I think this is where I point out that if you hadn't turned me down, I wouldn't have been all that innocent."

"You were jailbait."

"Is that the only reason you sent me packing?" She'd often wondered.

"Partly. It wasn't that I wasn't tempted. Hell, what guy wouldn't have been to have a luscious blonde wearing nothing but a come-hither smile and an itsy-bitsy pink bikini throwing herself at him? But the thing is, New York, you represented a complication I couldn't handle at twenty."

"What about now? Is that still how you see me?"

"Are you looking to be flattered? Or do you want the truth?"

"I want you to be honest."
Better to know than to wonder
.

"Then I'd have to say I still view you as a helluva complication. But"—he held up a hand when she opened her mouth to respond—"I also see you as the sexy woman I want to fuck blind."

Oh, God. That was exactly what she wanted, too.

"Well, that's certainly romantic."

"If you wanted poetry, you should've asked for it. Not that you would've gotten any, since my repertoire, with the exception of Robert Service's
The Cremation of Sam McGee
, which I had to memorize in the seventh grade, is pretty much limited to dirty limericks and inarching cadences. But you said you wanted the truth," he reminded her.

Sabrina had never been an impulsive woman. She'd always been a planner. A list maker, weighing the pros and cons of every move.

Twice in her life she'd made a spur-of-the-moment decision. The first was when she'd practically begged this man to take her virginity. Which she'd ultimately ended up giving away two years later on the narrow bed of her dorm room to an unimaginative TA in her statistics class.

The second time had been when she'd called the airline and booked a ticket home to Swann Island.

Which had brought her full circle, right back to the man who'd triggered rash decision number one.

"Well." Deciding she'd wondered long enough, and throwing caution to the winds, she looked him straight in the eye. "I'm legal now."

Good point, Zach thought as he took in the anticipation written over her face in bold, unmistakable strokes.

In that forthright way he remembered so well, she was letting him know flat out that he could have her. Which was exactly what he'd been thinking since he'd first accidentally looked in her bedroom window.

But then what?

Even as he told himself he was playing with fire, Zach allowed his gaze to drift from her eyes to brush over her mouth, lingering on her lips, which parted on a soft, inviting sigh.

He had only to move. A slight shifting of his head and their mouths would meet.

He paused, a desperate man caught on the edge of a jagged, treacherous cliff. One more step and they'd both go tumbling off.

Right into a pit of quicksand.

But perhaps, he mused, tracing the shape of her slightly parted lips with the roughened pad of his thumb, it might be worth it.

He tossed back the cooling tea, put the cup on the counter, and lowered his mouth to hers.

Her lips were warm and sweet and avid, as she immediately began kissing him back with such fervor that their teeth clinked.

His thumb tugged downward on her chin, allowing his tongue access to her lips. She twined her arms around his neck as he deepened the kiss, degree by simmering degree. Her tongue mated with his; her straining breasts pressed against his chest.

Heat smoldered at the base of his spine, creating a low, deep pull in his groin. The more he drank, the more he wanted. Lord help him, he couldn't get enough of her.

But still he refused to rush, taking his time, drinking from her lips with a slow, lingering pleasure that made it seem as if time had stopped just for him.

For them.

Zach was used to having his body burn in response to a willing woman. He was accustomed to a woman's touch making his blood hot, and he knew the ability of a woman's clever mouth to fog his mind.

But this was different.

Kissing Sabrina touched him in some elemental way, a way he'd never been touched before.

He'd always prided himself on his ability to shut off his emotions when there was a job to be done. He'd even managed to stop himself from killing that son of a bitch three-star when the team had finally gotten off that godforsaken mountain thirty-six hours after the copter crash.

But nothing could have prepared him for the tenderness flooding through him as he pulled her off the stool and drew her closer, sinking deeper and deeper into the prolonged kiss.

As she arched against him, needing, demanding more, Zach knew that another moment of this and he'd be lost.

Greed. Hunger. Need. They rose like ancient demons, battering at him, and as his aroused body screamed for relief, Zach contemplated going for it.

Common sense, along with a strong survival instinct that had kept him alive against all odds during his SEAL team days, told him that that despite her bold words, unless she'd done a one-eighty turnaround in the past eleven years, Sabrina wasn't a woman to rush into sex without weighing the consequences.

Which meant, since she didn't seem to be considering them now, she would have to deal with them later.

Which meant
he
would, as well.

Zach was no stranger to danger, to risk. He'd lived with it, and most of the time had even enjoyed it. But this woman and the feelings she stirred in him represented more risk than he'd ever known. He'd always recognized his own strengths, his own weaknesses.

And right now, even as he ached for her, even as he fought to remember that part of the reason he'd left the navy and returned home to Swann Island was that he didn't want anyone in his life, Zach was forced to admit that Sabrina Swann represented a major weakness. One he couldn't afford. Not while his own life was in such flux.

Which was why he drew back, denying the clamorous demands of his mutinous body.

"We'd better get you to bed." He paused a beat, giving himself time to change his mind. "Alone."

"Why?" She stared at him, breathless, confusion and lingering passion swirling in her eyes.

She was also visibly exhausted. Her complexion, which had always been fair, even during those summers spent beneath the hot Southern sun, gave her the look of fragile bone china.

"Because you look dead on your feet, and when I take you to bed, New York, I fully intend for it to last all night. And since I'm an equal-opportunity lover, I'm going to want you to be fully engaged. Which means you'll need to be well rested."

He took both her hands in his and stood up. "Which is why, as attractive as the offer is, sugar, I'm going to have to take a rain check."

"Houston, the ego has landed." Given that she'd had only a single glass of wine tonight, Zach knew it was fatigue, not alcohol, slurring her words. "I don't recall offering you any rain check."

"I'll take my chances." Linking their fingers together, he led her out of the kitchen. "Need some help getting upstairs?"

"I can make it." Those luscious lips he could still taste turned down in a frown. "I never would have expected this from you, Zachariah Tremayne," she said on a huff of feminine pique.

Zach laughed.

At her. At himself.

At this ridiculous situation.

"Damned if that doesn't make two of us."

The lady was not only gorgeous—she was smart as a whip and gutsy as hell. Which made her, in Zach's view, damn near perfect.

Which meant that if he didn't find a flaw pretty soon, he was sunk.