Frowning, she glared at the heavy wood door barring her entry. Obviously her quarry didn’t intend to respond to her knock. If she wanted to talk to him, she’d have to run him down herself, which meant ignoring protocol and letting herself into his current haven.
Waving off another swarm of mosquitoes—heavens, the little beasts were thicker than water—she pushed open the door to Rawls’s cabin and invited herself across the threshold. Nerves tightened her belly and tiptoed up her spine one itchy tingle at a time. Like the cabin she shared with Amy, the front entrance opened into a moderately sized room with a sparse kitchenette tucked into the left corner. Thick planks of wood marched across the bare floor and up the bare walls. Tilting her head back, she studied the ceiling, unsurprised to find wood planks there as well. From the furniture choice to the pictures on the walls—or lack thereof—the cabin Rawls shared with Mac, as well as the one she shared with Amy, suffered from a man’s touch.
The furniture, which consisted of a long, lumpy leather couch and two wide, lumpy leather recliners, was old and battered and grungy brown. The coffee table was simply a huge log that had been split in half, sanded smooth, and fitted with stubby log legs. Cheap plastic blinds covered the windows. Rather than rustic charm, the room screamed rural apathy.
The bright sunlight and pine-scented fresh air that streamed through the open blinds and open windows were the cabin’s saving graces. It still surprised Faith how different the air smelled up here tucked, as they were, in the pristine foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Unspoiled. Crisp. It was the clean, pine-tinged scent that countless air freshener companies sought to replicate—with limited success.
And if she allowed herself to spend any more time procrastinating, she’d still be standing here when the helicopter returned with Amy’s kids.
She glanced down the shadowy hall to the right of the kitchenette. The place looked like a duplicate to her cabin, which meant Rawls’s bedroom was somewhere down that hall. His bedroom . . . with his bed . . . What if he’d lain down to take a nap? What if he slept naked? Or . . . what if Rawls had migrated to the bathroom to take a shower, and all those long, lean muscles were streaming with soap and water? An image of wet, soapy, tanned flesh took root in her mind. A prickle started in her scalp, marched down the nape of her neck, and infiltrated her arms.
Heat flashed through her, raising her temperature at least a degree or two. A swollen, moist pressure settled between her thighs. She ignored her endocrine system’s exasperating flailing, something she’d become an expert at since finding herself cornered by a tall blond god in her lab six days earlier. Who would have guessed that the sexy stranger she’d been discreetly salivating over all those months ago at gate C-18 while waiting to board her flight to Hawaii would be the same man to drag her out from beneath Big Ben, and then step between her and her would-be kidnappers when the bullets started flying?
Even in the midst of danger, her hypothalamus had enthusiastically signaled its attraction to the hot, hard muscles protecting her from danger. Good lord, her memories of that night revolved around butterflies, tingles, and chills—along with all the other renditions of sexual excitement. Any fear she felt had taken a backseat to lust, and God help her, that hormonal flooding worsened with every second she spent in his company.
Thankfully, he hadn’t picked up on her intense sexual attraction. Or, his good-ol’-boy Southern manners were ignoring her hormonal meltdown out of politeness. The second possibility was all too real considering he was a Navy SEAL. From what she’d read, SEALs were ultra-observant. He should have picked up on her attraction to him.
And here she was, procrastinating again. Shaking her head in disgust, she eased up to the kitchenette and hovered in the shadowy mouth of the hallway. “Lieutenant Rawlings?”
Silence greeted her. She listened hard. Was that faint whisper the sound of water running behind a closed door, or the wind teasing plastic blinds?
“Lieutenant Rawlings, I brought you lunch,” she said, lifting the plastic-wrapped plate in her hands as an offering, which was absolutely ridiculous considering he couldn’t see the movement.
Okay, this was just silly. Squaring her shoulders, she headed down the hall.
“Leave it on the kitchen counter,” he said from somewhere down the hall and to the left.
She passed a small bathroom as his voice reached her, and she relaxed. At least she didn’t have to worry about stumbling in on him in all his naked glory—regardless of how much her endocrine system would have enjoyed the show. She followed his voice to the end of the hall and the open door on the left.