area and certainly within hearing distance. It’d taken him almost half an hour to climb up the cliff.
Joy stayed silent except for the shaky whoosh of her breath. It smelled sweet and minty, as if she’d just brushed her teeth. His palm seemed to burn where her lips had pressed against it, and he couldn’t stop looking at her full lips, her face. Her eyes were the same color he remembered. Cinnamon brown. They watched him with unnerving steadiness, missing nothing.
He lowered his arm but kept her in his embrace. This was the only time he’d ever felt her so close. Why rush it?
“I can’t explain everything, but I need to know if you’re willing to trust me. I’m in the middle of an undercover op, and I can’t get caught by the police right now. You’re my last hope before I get hauled away and blow the case.”
She blinked. He felt the tension in her legs, her thigh muscles. She wanted to kick him, to knee him. He got it—and had anticipated her tactics. He held her tight and secure.
“Odd habit you have, Brad. Getting yourself into serious trouble that isn’t your fault.”
God, he’d missed her honesty, the unshakeable confidence that bordered on sheer nerve.
And her beauty.
“You can say no and I’ll be gone. You can deny ever seeing me. I’m in a load of trouble and I need your help, Joy.”
“I WAS SUPPOSED to report to work twenty minutes ago. It’s my first day.” She hadn’t been able to take her gaze off Brad since he’d forced himself into the kitchen. And pressed his body against hers. She still hadn’t told him that she was waiting for the police.
He groaned. “Of course it’s your first day. It’d be too easy if you could’ve taken a day or two off.”
“A day or two?” She clutched the granite counter at her back. It was the only way to keep her hands from shaking because of the mini-shocks of awareness coursing through her veins.
Brad stood in the middle of the kitchen, his hands bloodied. His face was scraped and his clothing had dirt and sand on it. A briar stem clung to one arm of his torn black jacket, and his dark cargo pants were nothing like his Navy fatigue uniform. These pants fit him more tightly; they had to have a lot of stretch to let him move as well as he did. She could all too easily imagine the steely muscles beneath.
“Wait. How did you get here? Were you in my backyard?”
“Something like that, yeah.” He absently picked off some of the brambles.
“I never saw you. Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m fine. I’m on a tight timeline here, Joy. I don’t suppose you still have base access?”
“No, I mean yes—for two more days before my ID expires. I’ve been on terminal leave for the past two months. I got out, Brad.”
“I know. We’re Facebook friends, remember?”
How could she forget? Whenever she wanted to torment herself with the whys and why nots of her love life, she looked at his profile, which he’d made under a fake name. He’d messaged her when he requested she friend him on Facebook to make sure she knew it was him. He’d only ever posted one photo—of a sunset over the view of the Atlantic from Dam Neck, Virginia. She’d imagined them there, together, in different circumstances hundreds of times since they’d wrapped up Farid’s case.
Since she’d helped Brad stay out of trouble.
“What good will having my military ID do? Aren’t you still in the reserves? What about your ID?”
“I don’t have it. Truth is, I haven’t got any ID on me.”
Interesting.
“Any reason why?”
His green eyes revealed very little, but his slumped shoulders put the fear of God into her.
“Brad, what happened? Please tell me you weren’t involved in the explosion.”
His head snapped up.
“You know about it?”
She pushed away from the counter and crossed her arms. “I saw it. From my sunroom.”
“Did you see the aircraft?”
“I saw two F-18 Growlers, followed by a P-3 and a P-8. They flew west for a minute or two before I saw the fireball. I was worried it was one of the planes at first.”
“Did you see anything else that seemed suspicious?”
“No more from me, Brad. You said you needed help. If you want my help, you have to cut me in.”
He rubbed his hands across the back of his head and neck, much as she’d seen countless military men do after they removed their uniform covers. It was a habitual reaction for him, a sign of his stress, perhaps. His dark hair was longer than he’d worn it as a sailor, longer than Navy regulation by far. The lustrous curls at the nape of his neck made her grip her upper arms to keep from reaching across and touching him.
He was her idea of beautiful, if the adjective could be applied to a man.
“I’m FBI now. I’ve been working undercover trying to break up a cell.”
FBI. That was the “government job” he had. On Facebook he never got specific.
So he’d been out of the active-duty Navy this entire time. She’d thought his murky job description was because of his SEAL designation.
You could have gotten together.
No. She’d dismissed her attraction to Brad. Or rather, locked it away. Months ago.
Hadn’t she?
He shook his head. “Damn, it wasn’t supposed to go down like this.”
His profile was achingly familiar. Yet instead of the hardened strength she remembered, he gave off an air of uncertainty. Brad, vulnerable?
“How about some coffee?” She asked for him as much as for herself. She needed an immediate task to keep her thoughts where they belonged. If she was going to help Brad she needed to listen to his story instead of thinking about how sexy he looked standing in her kitchen.
* * *
“YOU’VE GOT UNTIL the police officer shows up. You can shower after I leave for work, wash and dry your clothes, make whatever food you need.” She handed him her largest mug, the one with the Navy JAG crest on it.
He raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement.
This was the man she’d come to understand first briefly in Cuba, and then Norfolk. He missed nothing; no detail was too minute to him.
“The cops?”
“I reported the explosion. They asked me to wait here until someone can take my report.”
“So I’m not safe here.”
“You’re safe for now. Tell me what you know, Iverson.”
“I’m working an undercover op. Let’s just call it against the bad guys for now. My job is to infiltrate them and monitor any suspicious activity. I assumed I was bringing in the suspects today. Things didn’t go according to my assumptions.”
He took a long pull of his coffee. The dirt under his fingernails made her wonder if he’d had to climb up from West Beach to get here.
Was that possible? The cliff was a straight drop.
Brad was a trained SEAL and now an undercover agent for the FBI. Scaling a cliff was all in a day’s work for him.
“You climbed up the cliff, didn’t