Vortex (Cutter Cay) (34 page)

Instead of a woman being held forcibly restrained by his unbreakable hold on her hand.

Logan was going to roast the son of a bitch’s balls over a spit and make him eat them.

“Thank you all for coming. Many of you came great distances to share this extraordinary day with us. Due to the ongoing investigation of the kidnappers, I can’t divulge too much information, but…”

Logan tuned him out.

Daniela was glued to Stamps’s side. She looked a little pale, but otherwise composed, and calm. Had they drugged her to keep her so calm? The Daniela he knew would be fighting tooth and nail to break free. Logan had to trust that she knew what she was doing by standing there so still and achingly beautiful beside a psychopath.

She appeared to be listening to Stamps intently as he spoke eloquently to the crowd. As if she really cared what the son of a bitch was saying. Logan’s gut burned.

“Daniela would like to say a few words. She’s being very brave, standing here with me after her ordeal, but she insisted.” Victor gave Daniela a loving glance before returning to the people in the room.

“No questions please. She’s very tired.” He raised his free hand and gave her an encouraging smile.

She ignored both as she stepped a little in front of him. “I’d like to thank all of you for coming.” She stopped suddenly, her attention caught by a familiar face a few feet away. Wright! He looked at her intently and clearly mouthed, “They’re safe.” Her parents were safe! She didn’t stop to question how he’d found her, how he’d known about her folks, how he’d saved them. All that mattered was that she was free to tell the truth. She looked up, leaned into the mic to make sure that every word she said would be heard.

“Somewhere out among you is a man named Harry Smith, a sniper, hired by Senator Stamps with orders to shoot me while I’m talking to you. I hope that doesn’t happen because I have a lot to say—” There was a pregnant pause as her words resonated with the press, then all hell broke out.

Stamps grabbed her arm, lifting a hand for silence. “My apologies. I was concerned that my fiancée wasn’t up to a press conference after the traumatic ordeal she’s been through, and unfortunately, the doctor was right. She’s on medication, and under the doctor’s care. I’ll—”

Daniela wrenched her arm out of his grip, and withdrew a cell phone from the pocket of her jacket. “I recorded a conversation we had just minutes ago. I’d like you all to listen.”

Logan pushed his way closer, but she still hadn’t seen him. She fumbled with the phone, and a second later the familiar tones of Stamps’s voice were heard. Loud and clear. He was clearly dictating something to be transcribed, and it was about a bill he was trying to push through, not an incriminating taped conversation.

The color drained from Daniela’s face. Stamps tried to wrestle the phone from her. “Give me the phone, honey, you’re just embarrassing yourself.” He turned to a woman in a red suit behind them. “Please get Doctor Calvert down here right away.” He motioned for his bodyguards to come and restrain Daniela as the press surged forward en masse.

Camera flashes went off as though they were on the red carpet. Boom mics were extended over heads, handheld-camera operators pushed and shoved to get closer. A CNN reporter almost got trampled by the BBC news crew. Logan stepped up onto the podium beside them, taking the phone Daniela was struggling to hold away from Stamps. She turned and her look of fear melted away as she saw him. With a glad cry, she flung herself into Logan’s arms. He wrapped one arm around her, glanced at the phone for a moment, pressed buttons a couple times, and held it up to the mic.

“Don’t what, for fuck sake?” The senator’s voice.

“Don’t want to lie?” said Daniela. “What if I stand up there and tell them that you were bringing drugs in from South America, and using Blue Opal as a distribution center?”

“Don’t hit her now!” a woman shouted.

“How about I let them know that you ordered thugs to kill DEA Special Agent Price, and his wife,
and
their three lovely children? Bet they’d love to run with
that
ball.”

“I’ve already had it leaked to the press that you’re mentally unstable. Who do you think they’ll believe? A woman taking antipsychotics and antidepressants? Or a well-respected sena—”

Wright and his men, accompanied by a dozen officials, circled the podium. Logan handed him the phone, with Stamps still talking.

“Well done,” Logan said into Daniela’s ear. She nodded, her entire body shaking with adrenaline. The senator tried walking off the stage as cameras flashed, but T-FLAC ensured he was going nowhere until the police had him in custody.

“I knew you’d come.” She spoke calmly, but fear glittered in her dark eyes as she said rawly, “He threatened my
parents,
Logan.”

Senator Stamps refused to be taken off the stage, jerking his arm back from the two T-FLAC men accompanied by local police officers. One police officer asked if he would like to be tazed, and the ballroom quieted as they waited, eager to hear Stamps’s response. This was a press conference that was probably already being Tweeted around the world.

“Fuck off.”

“Cuff him,” the police chief ordered. He eyed the senator with disdain. “You want to be treated with respect,
Señador
Stamps? You must earn it.” The officials hustled Stamps away, and Wright and his men followed to make sure he remained in custody.

Flashes sparked as cameras picked up every frame as Stamps was shoved toward the exit. Logan wrapped his arms tightly around Daniela as she buried her face against his chest, her hands fisted in his shirt in the small of his back. She wasn’t crying, but her entire body shook. He tightened his hold around her, pressing his lips to the crown of her head as he observed Wright and his men accompanying the locals.

Stamps would be returned to the States to stand trial. He’d be in jail a very long time.

Not long enough as far as Logan was concerned.

Suddenly the crowds pressing around the men erupted into screams and chaos, as some people in the crowd of reporters raced forward, while others pushed and shoved their way out of the seething masses.

What the hell?

Stamps’s head had
disappeared,
seconds before he dropped to the floor out of sight.

Daniela lifted her head. “What’s happening?”

“I believe the senator’s hired hit man just tidied up a loose end,” Logan told her grimly as the room erupted into a madhouse, as every cameraman and film crew tried to get the money shot of the senator’s lifeless body.

Twenty

Daniela’s lashes lifted to reveal whiskey brown eyes glazed with passion as Logan skimmed his hand over her hip. “We’re going to be—hmm—late for your brother’s wedding.”

Midmorning sunlight flooded Logan’s bedroom in his house on Cutter Cay, spilling over them as they lay, limbs tangled, on his big bed. The warm tropical breeze drifting through the ceiling-to-floor French doors cooled the sweat on their skin. “Island time, remember?”

“I’m sure they’re eager to get married.”

He kissed her throat. “I know what I’m eager for again…”

The room was filled with the scent of their lovemaking, and the heady fragrance of the ginger flower he’d plucked last night and tucked in her hair.

Accompanied by Dog, they’d arrived on Cutter Cay late the night before. And since the lights were dark at his brothers’ places, they’d come straight to Logan’s house high on the bluff.

He’d invited Daniela’s parents to join them later in the week, but for now it was just the two of them. Dog had trotted off in the dark to find Teal’s father, Sam, and hadn’t returned.

Logan kissed her soft mouth gently. Lazily exploring her damp curls, he found her slick and hot, and ready again. They’d made love enough times that they were both sweaty, breathless, and utterly replete, and yet …

Her fingers tangled in his hair as her muscles pulsed around his fingers, drenching his hand. She moaned low as his fingers found the exact right place, and exerted the exact right amount of pressure. Then, because it felt so damn good, he did it again. And again, until her eyes lost focus. One of his favorite looks for her. After several minutes of soft sighs, she murmured against his throat. “I have to do my face and hair. And you’re making me all hot and sweaty again. We’ll have to shower again too.”

Yeah. A shower. Again. They might miss Zane’s wedding altogether. A slow grin curved his mouth. “My brother won’t care.” They’d had it hard and fast before breakfast. Showered, and started to dress, and then one thing led to another …

“It’s his wedding, he won’t be looking at us,” she admitted breathlessly, as she shifted her hips, and parted her legs a little more to accommodate his hand. “But there’ll be other people there too. You don’t want to meet your new brother smelling of sex, do you?”

He picked up her hand, which was now languidly sifting through the hair on his chest, and stroked his tongue over the delicate blue vein in her slender wrist. Her fingers curled in reaction and he unfurled her hand to taste her palm, then each finger. She tasted like pineapple vanilla. “I’ll smell of you.”

“Now. Fine. At the wedding, definitely not.” She put her hand firmly on his chest. “Move, Logan, I—no fair,” she murmured, as he raked his teeth across her shoulder.

He rolled her on her back, saw the glint in her eyes, and reversed position, with her straddling him. She slid her leg over his hip, then seated herself and she slid down, fitting him like a glove. Her body pulsed and throbbed around him. He settled his hands on her slender hips, and flexed, pushing deep. Her nails scored his chest and her back arched. They took their time, rising and falling like the tide.

He glided his palms up the curve of her hips, over her ribs, then captured the gentle swell of her breasts. Her nipples were a deep coral, and pebbled beneath the brush of his thumbs. “Good?” He barely managed to push the word out, because the sensation was so sweet, so exquisite it bordered on pain.

“Perfect.”

She was soft and strong, a sea goddess as she rode him without mercy. “Yeah.” She
was
perfect. In every way.

Holding her gaze, he pulled out in a slow, measured stroke, then just as slowly pushed back deep inside her. Her breath caught, and she rose, then slid down his length in retaliation.

A slow, long, rolling climax surged through him like high tide. Head thrown back, Daniela arched as the climax swept through her. Her skin glowed like a creamy pearl in the sunlight filtering through the shutters, and her hair, once again dark, was a wild tangle around her shoulders.

Still buried deeply, Logan whispered, “Hi,” and reached up to brush her warm flushed cheek. Her mouth was a plump and deep pink, damp from his kisses, and her eyes sparkled.

She lifted her hand to stroke her fingers over his jaw. “I love you, Logan Cutter.”

He tugged her down so that their lips touched, feeling the heavy flutter of her heartbeat against his chest as he kissed her gently. His heart soared, and he tangled his fingers in her sweat-dampened hair. “I had no idea how big love could be until I met you,” he told her softly. “I saw what my life would be like without you in it when you disappeared from the cabin that night. Bleak, and empty.” His heart was so full, he could barely put together the depth and breadth of his love for this courageous woman. “I love you, Daniela. Marry me.”

Her arms tightened around him. “Without hesitation. But not today. Today is for Zane and Teal.”

“Soon.”

“And then it will be Bria and Nick’s turn…”

And they’d have to go to Washington to help unravel the mess Stamps had left behind. Logan wasn’t sorry the man was dead. Even a life sentence wouldn’t have been long enough. And he didn’t want Daniela to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder waiting for Stamps or one of his minions to retaliate. Stamps having his head blown away by his own hit man was poetic justice, and richly deserved.

Logan stroked her cheek. “You’re killing me.”

He’d introduce her to his family tonight. To Zane and Teal. Nick and Bria. Jonah. They’d love her as much as he did.

“We have the rest of our lives,” she murmured against his lips. She tasted of the pineapple they’d shared for breakfast, and rich coffee. She tasted, Logan thought, brushing her hair from her eyes, like the love of his life.

*   *   *

They actually did make it to the wedding. With minutes to spare. Daniela was glad. There was no way Logan would miss the wedding of his youngest brother.

It was close to sunset, and the sky was a glorious blue fading into a cinnamon red over the pale turquoise water. A couple of gulls wheeled lazily high above and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Daniela had never seen such fine, white sand. It felt powdery soft under her bare feet, and still retained the heat of the day.

Dog bounding around them, running in circles with doggie joy as they walked hand in hand down the sand to the foot of the bluff, where a stand of trees shaded a small group.

The cloudless sky was the couple’s wedding canopy, the susurrus of the waves lapping at the shore their music. The ocean was a crystal-clear aquamarine as far as the rust-streaked horizon. The warm breeze off the water made Daniela’s pink-and-lime-green tropical print
pareo
flutter around her ankles.

She was naked under it, and they both knew it. The fact that the wrapped fabric could drop from her body at any second made going out in public an adventure. She shook her head at herself for accepting Logan’s dare. She felt wild and free, and so happy it was as if she were filled with helium. With her fingers twined with Logan’s, she felt both insanely light and securely, blissfully tethered. “I’m surprised you haven’t called Jed or Piet to see how things are coming along.”

Logan’s eyes crinkled as he grinned. “Swimmingly.”

“Funny man.” It would be business as usual while Logan was away. The
Sea Wolf
was a well-oiled machine, and all the parts worked like clockwork, Daniela knew, even if Logan was absent. “How long can we stay?”