Waiting... On You (Force Recon Marines) (19 page)

“What are you doing up so early? No
one else is awake.”

She nodded toward the T.V. “Tom and
Jerry woke me up.” She looked around for her glasses. “I can’t see anything,
Nick.”

He chuckled. “You don’t need to see
anything. You need to go back to sleep and slumber party with us.” Before she
could protest further, he snatched her around the waist and pulled her off the
sofa. She fell onto the top of him with a muted squeak.

“I should go home,” she protested in a
whisper, her legs entangled in the afghan that had spilled down with her.

“You should stay here with me.” His
arms ensnared her, while his hands slid under her short cotton top. “I’m not
getting up to walk you home this early.”

She was nearly nose to nose with him.
His features finally came into focus. “Nick, I need my glasses. I can barely
see you.” She wiggled in protest, but he wouldn’t let her slide off his body.
His arms were like gurney straps!

Grinning at her, he pushed her hair
out of her eyes, off her forehead, sweeping his fingers through the silky soft
tangles. “You sure look pretty in the morning, Doctor.”

Whisper soft, his voice was
disturbingly husky. He cupped her cheek in his palm. She couldn’t seem to catch
a decent breath as his thumb moved slowly back and forth over her slightly
parted lips.

His knee was wedged between her legs.
She felt the heavy muscular pressure of his thigh between hers. Her chest was
flattened on his. Both of them were wearing sweat pants and white cotton
t-shirts. His contoured his muscles. Hers was pulled tight across her
unrestrained breasts. Involuntarily, her nipples tightened. She knew he felt
them. For one covetous moment, she ached for his big hands to slip underneath
her shirt and caress them.

She tried to look away before he saw
what she wanted, but he held her face gently in place. The intimacy between
them was so tangible, it almost hurt. His lips touched hers in a kiss that was
like the touch of a butterfly wing. Then with a barely audible groan, he turned
and rolled her off his body. Moving smoothly with her, he set her on her side
to face away from him, then tucked her into the long muscular curve of his
body. With one arm curled around her waist, he pulled her snugly up against him
so she couldn’t retreat. Now her butt was pressed squarely against his pelvis.

The new position wasn’t any less
arousing than the prior one. He was rock hard, poking against her bottom. Hanna
looked over at Christopher, who was still sound asleep, not more than an arms’
length away. She wondered if she shouldn’t just go home. She squirmed a little,
trying to ease away from him.

But Nick refused to release her. His
warm breath stirred her hair and tickled her ear. “Lie still,” he commanded,
his voice a low, sensual rumble in his chest. “It will go away eventually.”

Hanna’s entire body was on fire, and
it didn’t help at all when his hand dipped into her sweat pants, just under the
elastic waistband. Her breathing halted, suspended in her lungs. She was
certain he could feel the faint contractions in her lower body. Oh heavens, she
was dying here! And he knew what he was doing to her. She just knew he did.

“Shhh.... Relax,” he murmured into her
ear, his long, rough-tipped fingers splaying wide over her abdomen. “This isn’t
the right time or place. I can be a good boy— for now.”

Hanna forced herself to start
breathing again— to take deep, slow breaths to ease her sexual tension; to cool
her over-heated body. If she got any hotter, she was going to self-ignite.

“I just want to be close to you while
you sleep.” His chest rumbled with the feel of his muted laughter. “And stop
blushing. We’ve lain like this before— without any clothes on. Don’t you
remember?”

Oh my! Did she remember? Every
intimate detail! It had been three long lonely years since she’d given her
long-held virginity to Nick Kelly, but the memory of that night was etched into
her brain indelibly. She had never spoken of it to anyone. She supposed she was
afraid the magic of that night would shatter if she ever made it real enough to
put into words. For her, it had been a glorious dream come true. For him, it
had probably just been convenient sex.

Looking back on the memory, she
remembered how she had brought him home half-drunk from Yancy’s bar, saving him
from a night in the local jail. Once she’d gotten him home, she’d helped him
upstairs to his room and made him drink several cups of coffee. Sitting on the
edge of his bed with him, she’d listened to his harrowing experience in Pakistan.

She had never seen him so torn up
about anything before. The loss of so many of his men had eaten a hole in his
soul.

She’d thrown her arms around him and
held him tight upon hearing the pain in his voice. You couldn’t love a man the
way she loved Nick Kelly, and not want to comfort him enough to chase his
demons away. There had never been a time in her life when she wouldn’t have
given him whatever he needed.

And it hadn’t given her a moment’s
hesitation to sleep with him when he’d asked her to stay the night. She’d
waited forever for him to be her first lover, anyway. After all that wanting
and waiting, she’d nearly given up on her foolish dream. So when the
opportunity had finally presented itself, she’d grabbed it with both hands,
literally.

And Nick Kelly had been everything she
had dreamed he’d be as a lover. He’d been passionate, tender, and considerate.
No doubt very skilled, too, although she had no experience with which to
compare him. Her knowledge of sexual relations between a man and a woman came
from her medical books and her practice.

Nick had said once in a letter soon
afterward that she had been special, but the truth was, she had probably been
so unskilled, she had been less than thrilling. She might be his special
friend, but she doubted she ranked up there with his more memorable sexual
experiences.

Settling back to sleep in his arms,
she remembered exactly how incredible it had felt to lay naked with him in bed
all night. She’d had to go to work early the next morning, and he’d still been
asleep in his rumpled bed. He’d been lying on his back, with the blankets
tangled around his hips, leaving his dark-haired, muscular chest exposed. His
thick lashes had been resting softly against his sun-darkened skin. The lips
that had kissed every part of her the night past had been slightly parted as he
breathed in and out in his deep sleep. He’d looked so unbelievably handsome and
vulnerable that it had nearly been impossible to leave him.

And oh, how many times had she
recalled that particular vision of him in the three years since? Sometimes,
just that memory alone was all it took to start a fiery tingling between her
legs. And now he was home, reigniting all that sexual tension again.
Fall
asleep close to her, indeed!
Did he know that if he had moved his hand any
lower, he would have set her off like a Fourth of July firecracker? Damn! Was
he just playing with her? Like every other night in the last two weeks, she
fell asleep wondering what Nick Kelly wanted from her this time.

Two hours later, Hanna was awakened
once again, this time by Christopher, who was tugging on her.

“Antie Hanna, wake up, wake up!”

She opened her eyes just a little and
smiled at him. “Why?”

“Cause.”

“Cause? What kind of reason is that?”
Catching him around the middle, she pulled him close and tickled him. He
giggled until she made him cry uncle.

Reminded of Nick, she rolled onto her
back. He wasn’t on the floor, lying behind her, with his arm wrapped around her
and his hand halfway down her pants any longer. Only his blanket and pillow
remained. She turned her face into the pillow he’d used and took a deep breath
of his lingering scent.

“Grandma make breakfast,” Christopher
informed her, looking at her hugging Nick’s pillow like she was weird.

“Where’s your Uncle Nick?”

“Right here.”

The deep masculine voice made her drop
the pillow guiltily and sit up. He was on the sofa, holding her glasses out for
her. Damn and double damn! She was too old for this idiotic lovesick nonsense!
Trying to hide her blush, she combed her fingers through her disheveled hair.

Nick leaned forward, handed her
glasses to her, and whispered in her ear. “You look sexy as hell first thing in
the morning, Doctor.”

“Oh yeah, right!”

“Will you hug me instead of my pillow?
The real thing is better. I promise.”

Pushing to her feet, Hanna proceeded
to busy herself folding the blankets. Nick chuckled.

“Breakfast is ready,” Jessie announced
from the doorway to the kitchen.

Hanna jumped at the chance to escape
Nick. She nearly beat Christopher to the table.

But Nick was right behind her. He
pulled out her chair for her, perfectly composed and grinning wickedly. She
wished she had that kind of control over her emotions. Winking at her, he then
proceeded to help his mother serve breakfast. When it was all on the table, he
pulled Jessie’s chair out for her, too.

“Such a gentleman, son. You learn that
in the Corps?”

Nick laughed. “No, Mom. You taught
Lance and me our manners.” When they were all seated, he looked at the two
women at the table. “I’ve been recording whatever my bugs pick up. Things are
looking up this morning.” He glanced at Christopher. “After sport goes outside
to feed the dog and do his chores,” he looked pointedly at his nephew, “I’ll
fill you both in.”

When Christopher left, Jessie, who
looked tired and red-eyed this morning, waved Hanna and Nick off. “You two go
listen to the recordings. I don’t want to hear firsthand what those thugs are
up to.”

“Then leave the dishes, Jessie. I’ll
clean up when we’re done,” Hanna told her. “Go have coffee with Colleen.” She
handed Nick’s mother a fresh cup of coffee and urged her out the back door.
When the older woman was gone, she looked over at Nick. “Colleen will help
lighten her spirits. Your poor mom is going to get sick with all this worrying.
We have to find Lance soon.”

Nick nodded, as concerned as Hanna.
“Let’s go upstairs so you can listen to what I’ve picked up so far.”

Considering her thoughts this morning
about him, she wasn’t sure how smart it was to follow him into his bedroom, but
she was anxious to hear what he had picked up with his high tech bugging
devices.

Inside, his double oak bed was neatly
made up, testimony to the fact that he hadn’t slept in it last night. There was
a big pile of clothes on the bed, though. Laundry day apparently.

He pointed her toward an oak desk on
which he had a laptop computer and a bunch of other electronic gadgets. She
recognized some of the things she’d already seen him use. There was also a
small parabolic dish of some sort, sitting on his window sill, pointed toward
the northeast. Below it, there were a printer and a recording unit.

“Are these all your spy toys?”

“Tools of the intelligence gathering
business.” He smiled back at her like a little boy with a chest full of special
things. “Sophisticated toys.”

“Your laptop looks odd,” she
commented. “It looks like a small briefcase.”

Nick typed in a message that brought
up a screen of transcript. “It’s a military model we use in the field. It does
all the things your laptop will do, just a few more, and it’s made to withstand
rugged conditions like cold and heat, water and dust. You can drop it, jump
with it, read it at night so the light isn’t visible to the enemy, and link all
kinds of gadgets up to it, and the network is satellite driven and very secure.
Standard military operational stuff.”

“Right,” she said with a lift of one
eyebrow. “Just your normal spy model.”

Nick pointed to the screen. “This is a
written log or transcript of what I’ve recorded so far off the bugs I planted
at Yancy’s restaurant and house.”

He let her read it for a bit, then
summarized for her. “As you can see, Sheriff Thomas has been in frequent
contact with Yancy. He’s not happy about the girl that died of an overdose— your
patient from last Friday. He doesn’t mention your brother, but he does tell
Yancy they can’t afford to have any more slip-ups, like the one they had last
month. He might be talking about Dylan’s death. He tells Yancy his mules
shouldn’t have gone out to the pickup site until after dark.”

“What are mules?”

“Couriers— people who pick up and
deliver drugs to the dealers.”

“So, we are talking about a drug
smuggling operation going on here.”

“It looks like it, but I’ll know for sure
by this time tomorrow.”

“How?”

“Yancy received a call from someone
telling him that he should expect a big shipment tonight at midnight.”

“Tonight? Where?”

“The lower end of the bay. It sounded
to me as if he was referring to the eastern side, somewhere between Discovery
Cove and Gardiner’s Corner.”

“Do you think they’re talking about
dropping whatever they’re delivering into the crab pots along the coastline
there?”