THE PERFECT TARGET (17 page)

That was really a gun.

With inky black hair slightly long and rumpled by the warm breeze and the increasingly thick whiskers shadowing his jaw, he looked somewhere between a beach bum and a hit man.

Forsaken.

"What do you mean that's all that matters?" she asked, frowning.

He shoved his free hand deep into his pocket, hesitating a moment before answering. "If these people believe drinking water from that fountain or burning some cheap wax candle or saying the rosary before the altar will cure their illnesses or heal their broken hearts, grant them some sort of forgiveness, then who am I to say otherwise? Faith comes from the heart. We each have to make, to believe in, our own path."

The sudden sense of foreboding made no sense. Nor did the tightness in her chest. Sandro, this enigmatic man her father had sent to protect her, who'd been willing to take a bullet for her, was unlike anyone she'd ever met. He lived in the world of rules and protocol she'd grown to hate, but he spoke of faith and free will and fidelity like they were akin to the Holy Grail.

"Why do you work for my father?" she asked before she could talk herself out of it.

"I'm doing what I need to do."

"Which is what?" she persisted.

He turned to her then, surprised her by lifting a hand to tuck a flyaway strand of light brown hair behind her ear. It was the first time he'd touched her all day.

"Right now," he said, "it seems to be playing twenty questions with a beautiful woman."

She looked at the faint smile tugging at the mouth which had kissed her so thoroughly the night before, felt the heat sing to every nerve ending. She wanted to feel his mouth on hers again, to taste the ferocity of his kiss, to feel the hard planes of his body.

Some, she remembered, much harder than others.

She still didn't understand why he'd pulled away. As she'd lain there wrapped in blankets that did little to mute the chill of the stone floor, trying to find sleep, she'd seen him pacing among the huge oak barrels, knife in hand. She'd wanted to go to him, but had known he'd only reject her again.

Then this morning, there'd been … nothing. She'd used the rest room to change into another tacky outfit, this one a near-unimaginable combination of aqua and orange polyester, and when she'd come out, not even the floppy straw hat or out-of-style sunglasses had evoked a reaction from him.

"You've got evasion down to an art form, don't you?" she asked, fighting the urge to yank the dark sunglasses from his face and see his eyes.

"It's a skill that comes in handy in my line of work."

The words were matter-of-fact, but Miranda found little matter-of-fact about his chosen profession. At least, not for a man like him. "You could have been killed, Sandro. This path you're following, is it really so important that you're willing to die for causes that have nothing to do with you?"

Like Hawk had done.

The memory chilled her. Did Elizabeth already know? Did anybody? She hated thinking of how her sister would react. Elizabeth was strong and polished and poised, and she insisted Hawk meant nothing more to her than a forbidden fling with a sexy bodyguard, but Miranda knew her sister had given Hawk Monroe a piece of her soul she could never get back.

"Risks are part of the job," Sandro said simply.

Her throat tightened. "You really don't care, do you?"

"I care," he said quietly. "But what I do is worth the risk. It's like you said.
Life
is dangerous. Only a coward chooses the path of least resistance."

A smile slipped from her heart to her lips. "You really take that road-less-traveled stuff to heart, don't you?"

Through those dark sunglasses, he held her gaze a moment before answering. "Are you sure you never thought about becoming a cop or a shrink?"

"Never a cop," she answered, then paused. Around her, devotion and capitalism clashed almost violently, believers emptying their pockets to purchase wax figurines and souvenir trinkets manufactured in Taiwan. Barely a week before, she would have been nearly dizzy from aiming her camera in every direction, but today, she'd only snapped a few requisite shots. The carnival-like atmosphere that once would have intrigued was nothing compared to the man standing beside her.

The man to whom she'd soon say goodbye.

"Have you heard anything, Sandro?" She couldn't shake the cold feeling of dread. "Do you know when they're coming for me?"

He frowned. "Not much longer," he said, then startled her by reaching for her hand. "Let's go get some ice cream."

In other words, end of subject. The fingers he laced with hers were warm, however, the palm of his hand callused, the physical contact oddly reassuring.

Maybe Fatima really was a place of miracles.

"Actually," she mused, "I was hoping for a bubble bath."

* * *

"Honeysuckle?"

Sandro stabbed his hands deep into his pockets and tried not to look at the small white tub. "It was all they had."

Miranda just stared at him. She'd finally taken off the ridiculous hat and sunglasses he'd purchased to disguise her beauty, but had succeeded only in making her look more like a gypsy. The light brown hair suited her, making those exotic eyes of hers look greener, her mouth like berries.

"You bought me bubble bath?" she said for the third time. "That's the stop we had to make?"

"Just don't stay in so long you wrinkle," he said ambivalently. She didn't need to know about the other purchase. She would find out, of course. Later. After everything was said and done. But she would already hate him then. One more deception would hardly make a difference.

For a moment, she said nothing, just looked from him to the bottle in her hand, the baby powder and lotion and shampoo sitting on the counter of the small bathroom. After the ice-cream debacle, they'd left Fatima behind, traveling to the town of Orum, where tonight Miranda would be rescued.

From him.

She had no idea. At least, he didn't think she did. He'd been playing it cool, telling her only that the small wooden house was another in his network of secure locations, and that at least for the night, they could enjoy the creature comforts of warmth, a table to eat at, a mattress on which to sleep, and … a bubble bath.

"This is…" She turned back to him and beamed a smile so bright, so honest, it sliced to the bone. "Thank you," she said simply.

She might as well have told him to go to hell. "You're welcome."

An awkward silence descended as Miranda looked at him expectantly, and he tried not to think about her sinking into a steaming tub of bubbles. Naked.

"I'll give you some privacy," he practically growled, then walked away before he did something foolish like pull her into his arms and put his mouth to hers, see if he could still taste the mint-chip ice cream he'd watched her lick from the cone. What the hell had he been thinking? He might as well have been watching her audition for a starring role in a porn flick.

But that was the problem, he knew. When it came to Miranda, he had a damn hard time thinking. Other parts of his body tended to take over.

He didn't want to think about which parts.

Instead, he closed the door to the bathroom, but never heard her click the little lock. He kept walking, determined not to think about her sliding out of those tacky clothes and into the steaming water.

Just the aborted thought had him groaning out loud.

Impatience trampled through him, but for the next few hours, there was little he could do. As far as Miranda could know, tonight was nothing special. He'd thought about giving her a heads up, had
wanted
to clue her in so the operation wouldn't frighten her, but protecting his cover necessitated extracting Miranda from him as though he'd kidnapped her, not protected her. If she suspected he knew the cavalry was coming, she was too smart not to question how a criminal had learned of the mission, and why he'd done nothing to stop it.

And that was a risk he could not take.

They'd both be better off if she slept through the entire operation.

He lived in a violent world, populated by men who didn't think twice about hurting innocents to further their own causes. The general's reach was far, and deep. He had followers everywhere, even in America. He could easily disguise someone as a reporter, even someone interested in purchasing her pictures, to scout out what had really happened when the ambassador's daughter vanished from the world stage for a few tumultuous days. And though he trusted Miranda wouldn't knowingly say anything to compromise his cover, his life, he also knew she wasn't a trained liar. And the general's men
were
trained observers. They'd see the flicker in her eyes, the dilation of her pupils. They'd hear the hesitation in her voice, notice the flush to her neck. And if they suspected, for even one threadbare second, that she knew more than she was saying, they had ways to make her talk.

Heinous ways that made Sandro want to stab his paring knife into the safe house's ratty sofa.

He would never put Miranda in that position. Never. It was his battle, this life, and he would fight it by himself.

For Gus, and for Roger.

Penance, he knew, didn't always come from confessionals or burnt offerings. Real penance came from the soul.

The sun dipped lower against the western horizon, inviting the shadows of early evening to spill across the dirty, hardwood floor. Sandro went to the kitchen and pulled his other purchase from his pocket, eyed the small bottle grimly, then made one last precaution to protect Miranda from what was about to go down. When he returned to the main room, he stared out at a few storm clouds gathering against the twilight horizon, refusing to think about Miranda naked in a tub of steaming bubbles.

"Your turn."

He spun around in one smooth move, gun in hand.

"Whoa," Miranda said with a damningly impish smile. She lifted her hands into the air. "I didn't do it."

Oh, but she did. She stood there in the oversize Surf Portugal shirt he'd bought her to sleep in, her hair piled behind her head, leaving a few stray tendrils to drip down and play at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes twinkled. Her skin was scrubbed clean. Her feet were bare.

"Never sneak up on an armed man," he barked, lowering his gun. Self-recrimination sank like a rock in his gut. "Don't you realize what I could have done to you?"

If she heard the edge to his voice, she ignored it. "You haven't done anything to or with me, Sandro, except keep me safe. Why would I think that's going to change now?"

He looked at her standing in the shadows and hoped like hell the cavalry charged in soon. "Every man has his limits."

"Yours must be far and deep, then," she said with a completely straight face, and it was all Sandro could do not to eliminate the distance between them and crush her in his arms. He didn't understand how she made him want to smile, when he knew damn good and well in only a few hours she would despise him.

With a casualness that belied the frustration tightening through him, he started toward her. To reach the bathroom, he had to pass her. "The doors are locked," he said, "the windows secure. No one can get in."

"You got that right," she agreed, her smile turning rueful. "At least not yet."

Not once in his thirty-two years had Sandro expected to see the day he didn't want a beautiful woman to want him. Just a few more hours, he told himself.
Just a few more godforsaken hours.

"Yell if you need me," he said, moving past her.

"And you'll come?" she asked glibly. "That's all it takes?"

He didn't stop, didn't turn around, just kept walking toward the small bathroom, one deliberate step at a time. He refused to run like a coward, even though he needed to feel the cold water raining down on him with the same intensity his body hungered to feel her moving beneath him and above him, with him.

Hell, who was he trying to kid? It wasn't just his body that hungered for her and he damn well knew it.

"Sandro."

He stopped, let her voice slam into him like a bullet. "What?"

"It doesn't have to be this way."

He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply. Exhaled raggedly. Knew better than turning to face her, exposing himself to those bewitching eyes. Even from the shadows, he would see the green. "You don't have a damn clue what you're saying, Miranda."

"And I suppose you do?" she asked, and he could tell she was moving toward him.

"Damn straight I do." He stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

Unlike her, he clicked the lock.

Irony sluiced in from all directions. He wasn't a monk. Far from it. Granted, he hadn't been with a woman in too many months to count, but that didn't mean the desire wasn't there, the need. Lately, it had only been the opportunity lacking.

Now, the desire and the need and the opportunity had presented themselves to him in a tidy, heaven-sent package. Miranda Carrington was a grown woman. His job was to protect her life, not her virtue. There was no rule in the ISA operations manual that said he couldn't make love to a beautiful woman who made it abundantly clear that's what she wanted.

Sandro shucked his clothes, stepped into the cool white bathtub and turned on the shower, all cold. Water rained down on his shoulders like icy daggers, but he barely flinched. He savored, actually. Because while there was no ordinance in ISA regulations that prevented him from having Miranda hot and naked and twined around him, the rule did exist. Despite some of the choices he'd made, despite the way he was raised, the example set by his philandering parents, he knew right from wrong.

And making love to Miranda would be very, very wrong.

Soon, she would think him a liar, a criminal. Soon, she would hate him. He refused to saddle her with memories of intimacies between them, intimacies that would turn her stomach in only a matter of hours. She didn't deserve that, no matter how badly they burned for each other right now. Soon, desire would be washed out by deceit.

The scream damn near stopped his heart. It was low and throaty and shocked. Scared. "Sandro!"