for him to call a temporary truce with Mia and accept her offer of help.
She was signaling to make the left into the beach parking lot when the man finally spoke.
“There she is! With some kid. At two o’clock—”
“Where?” Mia slowed, uncertain.
“Just stop the car!”
Francisco opened the door, and Mia slammed on the brakes, afraid he would jump out while the car was still moving. And then she saw Natasha. The little girl was at the edge of the parking lot, sitting on the top of a picnic table, paying solemn attention to a tall African-American teenage boy who was standing in front of her. Something about the way he wore his low-riding, baggy jeans was familiar. The kid turned, and Mia saw his face.
“That’s Thomas King,” she said. “That boy who’s with Natasha—I know him.”
But Francisco was already out of the car, moving as fast as he could with his limp and his cane toward the little girl.
There was nowhere to park. Mia watched through the windshield as the former Navy lieutenant descended upon his niece, pulling her none-too-gently from the table and setting her down on the ground behind him. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she could tell that it wasn’t a friendly greeting. She saw Thomas bristle and turn belligerently toward Francisco, and she threw on her hazard lights and left the car right where it was in the middle of the lot as she jumped out and ran toward them.
She arrived just in time to hear Thomas say, “You raise one hand to that girl and I’ll clean the street with your face.”
Alan Francisco’s blue eyes had looked deadly and cold when Mia first ran up, but now they changed. Something shifted. “What are you talking about? I’m not going to hit her.” He sounded incredulous, as if such a thing would never have occurred to him.
“Then why are you shouting at her as if you are?” Thomas King was nearly Francisco’s height, but the former SEAL had at least fifty pounds of muscle over him. Still, the teenager stood his ground, his dark eyes flashing and narrowed, his lips tight.
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are,” Thomas persisted. He mimicked the older man. “‘What the hell are you doing here? Who the hell gave you permission to leave…’ I thought you were going to slam her—and she did, too.”
Frisco turned to look at Natasha. She had scurried underneath the picnic table, and she looked back at him, her eyes wide. “Tash, you didn’t think…”
But she had thought that. He could see it in her eyes, in the way she was cowering. Man, he felt sick.
He crouched down next to the table as best he could. “Natasha, did your mom hit you when she was angry?” He couldn’t believe softhearted Sharon would hurt a defenseless child, but liquor did funny things to even the gentlest of souls.
The little girl shook her head no. “Mommy didn’t,” she told him softly, “but Dwayne did once and I got a bloody lip. Mommy cried, and then we moved out.”
Thank God Sharon had had that much sense. Damn Dwayne to hell, whoever he was. What kind of monster would strike a five-year-old child?
What kind of monster would scare her to death by shouting at her the way he just had?
Frisco sat down heavily on the picnic table bench, glancing up at Mia. Her eyes were soft, as if she could somehow read his mind.
“Tash, I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing his aching, bleary eyes. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“This some kind of friend of yours?” the black kid said to Mia, his tone implying she might want to be more selective in her choice of friends in the future.
“He’s in 2C,” Mia told the boy. “The mystery neighbor—Lt. Alan Francisco.” She directed her next words to Frisco. “This is Thomas King. He’s a former student of mine. He lives in 1N with his sister and her kids.”
A former…student? That meant that Mia Summerton was a teacher. Damn, if he had had teachers who looked like her, he might’ve actually gone to high school.
She was watching him now with wariness in her eyes, as if he were a bomb on a trick timer, ready to blow at any given moment.
“Lieutenant,” Thomas repeated. “Are you the badge?”
“No, I’m not a cop,” Frisco said, tearing his eyes away from Mia to glance at the kid. “I’m in the Navy….” He caught himself, and shook his head, closing his eyes briefly. “I was in the Navy.”
Thomas had purposely crossed his arms and tucked both hands underneath them to make sure Frisco knew he had no intention of shaking hands.
“The lieutenant was a SEAL,” Mia told Thomas. “That’s a branch of special operations—”
“I know what a SEAL is,” the kid interrupted. He turned to run a bored, cynical eye over Frisco. “One of those crazy freaks that ride the surf and crash their little rubber boats into the rocks down by the hotel in Coronado. Did you ever do that?”
Mia was watching him again, too. Damn but she was pretty. And every time she looked at him, every time their eyes met, Frisco felt a very solid slap of mutual sexual awareness. It was almost funny. With the possible exception of her exotic fashion-model face and trim, athletic body, everything about the woman irritated him. He didn’t want a nosy neighbor poking around in his life. He didn’t need a helpful do-gooder getting in his face and reminding him hourly of his limitations. He had no use for a disgustingly cheerful, flower-planting, antimilitary, unintimidatable, fresh-faced girl-next-door type.
But every single time he looked into her hazel eyes, he felt an undeniable surge of physical attraction. Intellectually, he may have wanted little more than to hide from her, but physically…Well, his body apparently had quite a different agenda. One that included moonlight gleaming on smooth, golden tanned skin, long dark hair trailing across his face, across his chest and lower.
Frisco managed a half smile, wondering if she could read his mind now. He couldn’t look away from her, even to answer Thomas’s question. “It’s called rock portage,” he said, “and, yeah. I did that during training.”
She didn’t blush. She didn’t look away from him. She just steadily returned his gaze, slightly lifting one exotic eyebrow. Frisco had the sense that she did, indeed, know exactly what he was thinking. Cold day in hell. She hadn’t said those exact words last night, but they echoed in his mind as clearly as if she had.
It was just as well. He was having a pure, raw-sex reaction to her, but she wasn’t the pure, raw type. He couldn’t picture her climbing into his bed and then slipping away before dawn, no words spoken, only intense pleasure shared. No, once she got into his bed, she would never get out. She had “girlfriend” written all over her, and that was the last thing he needed. She would fill his apartment with flowers from her garden and endless conversation and little notes with smiley faces on them. She’d demand tender kisses and a clean bathroom and heart-to-heart revelations and a genuine interest in her life.
How could he begin to be interested in her life, when he couldn’t even muster up the slightest enthusiasm for his own?
But he was getting way ahead of himself here. He was assuming that he’d have no trouble getting her into his bed in the first place. That might’ve been true five years ago, but he wasn’t exactly any kind of prize anymore. There was no way a girl like Mia would want to be saddled with a man who could barely even walk.
Cold day in hell. Frisco looked out at the blinding blueness of the ocean, feeling his eyes burn from the glare.
“What’s a SEAL doing with a kid who can’t swim?” Thomas asked. Most of the anger had left the teenager’s eyes, leaving behind a cynical disdain and a seemingly ancient weariness that made him look far older than his years. He had scars on his face, one bisecting one of his eyebrows, the other marking one of his