Clutching what seemed to be a jumble of toiletries and a nightgown close against her body, she gave him a level look and said, “Are you going to tell me why we have intelligence agents escorting us everywhere we go and spending the night across the hall?”
Cal couldn’t tell her the truth, and he wasn’t going to lie to her. She knew nothing about the danger she was still potentially in, because neither he nor anyone else had told her that the man she called Heavy Tread might very well be Agent Lon Whitman, CIA. Or that her identification of Whitman’s voice, if identify it she did, would be what brought him down.
All she knew was that Cal was wrapping up the job he’d been carrying out when his plane had gone down, and that she was needed because she was a witness to what had happened on Attu. The agents felt, and he and his father agreed, that telling her anything more might conceivably compromise her ability to be impartial when she heard Whitman’s voice.
Cal said, “No.”
Gina’s lips compressed. “That’s what I thought.” Turning toward the bathroom, she said over her shoulder, “I’m going to take a shower.”
He nodded, and she went into the bathroom and closed the door. He thought about joining her—as tired as he was, the idea of taking a shower with Gina was enough to make him realize that he wasn’t that tired—but knowing how tired she had to be dissuaded him. When she emerged, looking sweet and slightly ridiculous and amazingly sexy all at the same time in a long-sleeved, ankle-grazing pink flannel granny gown that he was as sure as it was possible to be was like nothing she ever wore, he allowed himself one look before managing a gruff, “Go to sleep,” and retreating to take his own shower.
When he finished and came back out into the bedroom, he was wearing a towel around his waist, a fresh Band-Aid over his wound—the bullet was coming out in the morning—and nothing else, because the plaid flannel pajamas that had been folded into that shopping bag for him weren’t going to happen.
To his surprise, she was still awake, propped up in bed in a room that was dark except for the blue glow of the TV, flipping through channels.
He stopped beside the bed to look down at her. Her tawny hair was loose and fell in a silken slide over one shoulder. Her fine-boned face was a pale oval in the gloom. The covers were tucked up under her armpits, so basically all he could see of the rest of her was the pink ruffle at the neckline of her gown and the long, full sleeves that ended in more ruffles at her wrists.
He was a sick man, he decided. Pink flannel granny gowns obviously did it for him. One look and he was instantly hard.
“I thought you’d be asleep,” he said.
She shook her head, flicked him a look. “I waited for you.”
“Oh?” He dropped the towel and slid into bed beside her. Taking the remote from her unresisting hand, he turned the TV off, dropped the remote on the table, and leaned over her. “I hear you think I’m pretty great.”
There was just enough light from the halogens in the parking lot filtering in around the edges of the curtains to enable him to see that she was looking at him, to see her slight smile.
“I do.” She put her hand on his shoulder. Her fingers felt delicate and cool.
“I think you’re pretty great, too.” His voice was husky. Coming from her, the faint, clean scent of the same soap he’d showered with that hadn’t done a thing for him at the time now teased his nostrils like the headiest of perfumes. “And beautiful. And sexy as hell.”
“You do?” She snuggled close, and he got treated to some full body contact with a whole lot of Downy-soft flannel. Suddenly he was so consumed with lust that he ached. Jesus God, maybe he had a granny nightgown fetish. Who’d known? His hand closed on a firm round breast with an eager little nipple that he could feel nudging his palm through the cloth.
“Mm-hmm.” He kissed the breast his hand had captured, opening his mouth and teasing her nipple with his teeth and tongue until the flannel was wet and she was gasping and clutching at his shoulders and straining up against him.
Then he kissed her mouth.
By the time the nightgown finally came off—half a dozen confoundingly tiny buttons at the neck made removing the damned thing more of a challenge than he had foreseen—her legs were wrapped tight around his waist and he was thrusting hard inside her. His mouth was on her bare breasts and her hands were buried in his hair and she was moving beneath him and moaning. He couldn’t have been hotter if he’d been set on fire.
His last semilucid thought before he succumbed to the flames was, I ain’t letting this woman go.
Chapter Twenty-Eight