Intimate Details Read online

  Breathtaking.

  Blooming trees dotted the forest, disrupting the green canopy with color. There might not have been a huge diversity of birds on the island, but the beauties they did have sunned themselves on the treetops, harvesting insects and fruits. The sand seemed pink from a distance, the ocean a mesmerizing azure. She took a slow breath and filled her lungs with the exceptional beauty of the place, forgetting for a moment her precarious perch and even the mission.

  “So?”

  “Beautiful.” The word didn’t do it justice. She was glad that she had come up the mountain with him, even beyond the information she’d been able to gain.

  He turned her in the circle of his arms. Since she was clinging to him with one arm now, their faces were only inches apart.

  His blue-green eyes matched the ocean, the color seeming to swirl as the waves were doing in the distance. Awareness blossomed between them, taking her by surprise, making her wonder if he felt it, too. Cal Spencer. He was not at all the type of man she was normally attracted to. So why was she at this moment wishing that he’d keep holding on to her?

  His gaze dropped to her lips.

  Her heart just about stopped.

  He wasn’t thinking what she thought what he was thinking, was he?

  “If I don’t kiss you now, I’ll never forgive myself,” he said with a half smile.

  She was too stunned to protest.

  The next second his warm mouth was on hers. Not crushing and wild with passion but not tentative, either—a firm, tantalizing kiss from a man who seemed to know exactly what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to go for it.

  She wasn’t sure whether it was the height or the kiss that made her dizzy, but she found herself tightening her grip on him.

  He took his time, still smiling when he pulled away. “I quite fancy you, you know.”

  She blinked. “Are all Britons this straight to the point?”

  His only response was a widening grin.

  She tried to pull away from him a little. She needed distance to process what had just happened.

  “Right.” He let her go. “I’d love nothing more than to stay up here snogging with you the rest of the day, but I suppose we better make our way to the ground and get back before Mark sends out a search team. I’ll go first,” he said. “To catch you if you fall.”

  She did have a sense of falling just then and it had nothing to do with the tower. No, no, no. She wasn’t going to go there. The kiss—snogging, as he’d put it—had been nothing but an impulsive act brought on by the beauty of the moment and their stunning surroundings.

  She was not going to obsess over it, was not going to make herself look ridiculous by demanding an explanation. She was going to forget it and put on an air of cool European elegance about the whole thing, to which he was no doubt accustomed.

  She just needed to figure out how to go about it.

  KISSING HER MIGHT NOT have been the smartest thing he’d ever done in his life, but it was certainly among the top five most pleasurable. Her body was driving him crazy. No, it was more than her body. It was the fire in her and the strength. She was alert at all times, always thinking, always ready for anything.

  Was she ready for more than a kiss? Heaven knew he was.

  Cal held a vine out of the way and let her pass. The steady wind and the sun from the cloudless sky had evaporated some of the moisture from the ground, so going back was a little less difficult than their trek to the tower had been.

  He did his best to put away his carnal thoughts about Gina and focus on what they needed to do next.

  She seemed busy with her own thoughts, as well. They didn’t talk until they came to a point where a wide patch of fallen trees blocked the way.

  “Must have been knocked down overnight by the wind,” he said. It hadn’t been like this on their way up.

  She nodded.

  “Should we go around?” He glanced at the jungle that looked pretty dense on both sides. How much time would they lose?

  “Climb over.”

  Not an impossible task but not an easy one, either. Some trunks were three feet wide; others had fallen crisscrossing each other. If she didn’t mind doing it, he could certainly keep up. He planted his boot on the first and moved forward, watching where he stepped. He extended a hand back to her to help, but she ignored it and made good progress of her own.

  They had to go around the bigger branches that were sticking up, slide down to the ground, get up on the next tree trunk, over and over again. She got ahead of him at one point. Distracting. His gaze kept sliding to the efficient way she moved, feminine yet not the least hesitant. There was a quiet assurance to whatever she did, a single-minded focus, a temerity that said she’d find a way or make one.

  He grinned.

  Her body looked enticing from any angle. She was one of the few women who looked as good in cargo pants as she did in a bikini.

  He slipped and had to grab after a branch to catch himself. “Sod it,” he muttered when his foot got wedged between two sizable trees.

  “Need help?” She turned to come back.

  “No. Fine.” He needed to stop daydreaming about her. There was something about the woman that had gotten under his skin with super speed.

  He righted himself, then got going again. They were almost at the end of the obstacle course, a stretch of steep decline ahead of them that held sparse vegetation. Walking would be easier once they got that far.

  She was on the last fallen tree, in the process of jumping off, when it began rolling. She couldn’t jump ahead now or the tree would roll right over her.

  “Cal?” She focused on staying on, doing some sort of a circus act. She couldn’t jump off forward, but she couldn’t jump back, either, as it seemed that first log had been holding the one behind it that was now following. Had she fallen, she would have been ground up between the two.

  “Hang in there.” His log was moving now, too. The first one had started a domino effect. Great. Soon a dozen trees were rolling downhill at a frighteningly steep angle, picking up speed as they went.

  They couldn’t stay on for more than a few seconds. The going was too bumpy as the trees flattened the low brush before them. If they fell, they would be crushed.

  He looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of a washout up ahead where water running down the hill had removed the soil. Was it big enough for the both of them? What other chance did they have? “See that?”

  “I’m going for it.” Gina leaped as if she’d practiced this before.

  His heart stopped as she disappeared in the hole.

  He was only a few yards behind her. Closer, closer now. He dropped, seeing her eyes go wide as he crashed toward her, then the next log smacked him in the back of the head and pushed him into the crevice, right on top of her. He saw stars, closed his eyes against them and the sudden dizziness.

  The rest of the logs thundered over them in a rush, the whole nightmare lasting less than a minute. But it had been a nerve-shaking minute, his back taking a nasty pounding.

  “I think we’re okay to get out,” she said under him, sounding breathless.

  “Give me a minute.” His head was swimming. He needed to get his bearings. “Wouldn’t have minded skipping that.”

  “I can’t breathe.”

  “Right. Sorry about that.” He pulled up and away. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m not about to complain. With a little less luck, I could have been a human pancake. You?”

  He lifted a hand to the back of his head where a sizable bump was already forming. His fingertips came away bloody. “I think the logs won this round.”

  “Let’s not go another.”

  “You can’t fight Mother Nature.” He climbed out, doing his best not to trample on her.

  “Let me take a look.”

  “No big deal.”

  She flashed him an impatient glare. “Save that stiff British upper lip for another day.”

  As a matter of fact,
he was saving his lips for her.

  He didn’t think she would appreciate a declaration like that, so he simply rolled his eyes at her insistence to take a look at the wound. Lord, that made him dizzy. Frankly he would have preferred to remain macho and indestructible in her eyes. Well, that ruse was up. He turned to let her look her fill.

  “I could try and bring one of the four-wheelers up here.”

  With the logs blocking the path now? Hardly. And he wasn’t hurt that badly, anyway. “I’m happy to report that my legs are in fine working order.”

  “You wanna be stubborn about this?”

  “Absolutely.” At least the dizziness was passing. The back of his head throbbed, but he was prepared to ignore that.

  “Want to hold on to me?”

  He grinned, torn between taking any excuse to touch her and preserving some manly image. Bad enough he’d been too stunned to enjoy the two of them being pressed together in that crevice. He promised himself to be fully operational next time they were sandwiched against each other. “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  He strode forward with purpose, just to show her that he could.

  “So tell me about this Jimmy.” He’d been itching for the story since the day before. He was beginning to like her. He wanted to know what he was getting himself into.

  She looked at him with a guarded expression, trying to hide her surprise.

  “You talk in your sleep.”

  “Nothing to tell.” She quickened her pace.

  “What did he do to you?” He did his best to catch up.

  “Nothing.”

  “So this guy’s walking down the street…he didn’t look good to you, so you popped him? Let me know when I start to annoy you.”

  “Now.”

  “I like your sense of humor,” he said. “I take it Jimmy didn’t?”

  “He—” she took a deep breath and turned enough to fix him with a glare “—beat his wife and kids senseless every single day of his miserable life.”

  The smile slid off his face. “The law couldn’t protect them?”

  Her movements became more forceful, more jerky, as if every muscle wound tight in her body. “I was the law. I couldn’t do anything when everyone kept claiming all the bruises came from accidents.”

  She went over the next log without saying more.

  “And?”

  “There’s no and. I don’t talk about this stuff.”

  He glanced at his palm, which was starting to burn, and picked out a two-inch sliver without slowing. “Scared you that much?”

  “He didn’t scare me,” she said, tight-lipped with a flash of heat in her eyes.

  “Not him. That you took him out. Is that why you’re no longer a cop? You quit over this?”

  She ignored him for a while. Then, when he’d given up hope for an answer, she said, “I went to prison over this.”

  That brought him up short. “Does my cousin—”

  “I’m sure he knows. It’s part of why I’ve been recruited. The unbreakable cover. I’m a bona fide criminal.” Her voice held a tinge of bitterness.

  “But you were a cop,” he said after a moment of reflection. “He was a wife and child abuser.”

  “Excessive force. The jury saw it as manslaughter.”

  “Nice justice system you have.”

  She shrugged but after a few steps stopped and looked back at him. And then it all came out.

  “It wasn’t the first time or the second that the neighbors called me to the house. The mother had fresh bruises. The kids were too skinny, as always, the two-year-old with a cast on his foot. Fell out of his crib, supposedly. They lost a child the year before. Fell down the stairs. They gave me the same story every time. Neighbor should mind his business. They were loud—so what? TV was on, whatever. The father was drunk or high or both. I walked through and saw a gun cabinet—new. He got a job as a two-bit security guard somewhere and weaponed up.”

  “Gun-happy lot, you Yanks.” Which was hardly her fault, and the observation wasn’t particularly helpful at the moment, either. “Never mind.” He flashed her an apologetic smile. “So what happened?”

  “I saw the future in that gun cabinet. Knew what I was going to find the next time I got called out.” She shook her head, looking away from him.

  “I asked him for registration on the weapons. I figured he had them, but I wanted him to know I was keeping a close eye on him. He got all agitated, called me a couple of choice names. The wife got the papers. She wanted me out of there, didn’t want me to upset him, knew he would take it out on her and the kids when I left. I suppose I goaded him a little. I wanted him to lose it—lose it with me, with someone who could handle him for a change. He swore at the wife. I pushed him down on the chair. Guess he wasn’t used to that.” She cleared her throat.

  He came closer to stand next to her.

  “When I turned, he swung at me from behind. I blocked. He grabbed the bread knife from the table.”

  “So it was self-defense.”

  She looked him in the eye. “I could have disarmed him. See? Loyalty is a tricky thing. I was loyal to the people I was supposed to protect, as opposed to being loyal to the law. Life is one big gray area, if you ask me.”

  He could see the guilt in her gaze, that she lived with it still.

  “If not self-defense, then defense of the family.”

  She flashed a tight, bitter smile. “The widow made him out to be a saint at my trial. He was bad, but he was all she had. She hated me for what I did.” She started moving forward.

  “Would you do it again?”

  She thought about it. “I don’t know. I want to think I wouldn’t. That I would be smart enough to find a better way. I had too much rage.” She stopped again.

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it. I’m feeling a lot of outrage on the issue just by listening.”

  She moved on in silence, her head down.

  “You probably saved lives with what you’ve done,” he told her.

  She stopped and took a deep breath, blew it out. “I’m not even sure it was all about them.” She looked miserable.

  “You didn’t shoot the guy for self-gratification. He was no threat to you. You could have walked away. You gave up your career to save that family.”

  She wouldn’t look at him as she began walking again, keeping her attention on the ground in front of her. He supposed it had to be hard on her, even though in her profession she’d probably been prepared for the possibility that a deadly confrontation could happen. Still, from what he understood, that was rare. Most cops retired without ever having to draw their weapons. In England, the average constable didn’t even carry a firearm.

  He would have liked to ask more questions but figured she was done with the subject and didn’t want to push her. But after a few minutes she looked back at him and began talking again.

  “When I was a kid, we had a neighbor—Janie. She was my best friend. Then when she was about nine she started acting funny. Being scared of her father and whatever. She knew about sex and all long before any of us other girls. Sometimes she had bruises she wouldn’t talk about.” She paused.

  He had a sick feeling he knew where this story was going.

  “She died over Christmas break.” Gina kicked a stone with her boot. “Fell down the basement stairs. I didn’t put two and two together until much later. I think when I saw those kids hovering at the edge of the kitchen, stiff with fear as they watched their father, I saw Janie, too.” She blinked rapidly a couple of times as she turned from him again.

  “For what it’s worth, I think I would have done the same,” he said.

  “Didn’t make any difference, anyway.” She shook her head, and he caught a look of vulnerability on her face that made him want to reach out to her.

  He liked when she was tough and spunky but sensed that there was another side to her, one that maybe that tough shell had been developed to hide. He was seeing her other face no
w and it touched something inside his chest.

  He held back, unsure if she would accept comfort from him. She was talking to him, taking him into her confidence. He didn’t want to bring about any awkwardness between them, afraid that whatever he did might dispel the mood.

  “A friend of mine from the force kept an eye on the family for me for a while,” she explained. “Two months after I’d gone away, the wife shacked up with another loser, same type as the one before. She was stuck in a cycle she couldn’t get out of and her kids were stuck in there with her. She wouldn’t go to a shelter, wouldn’t take any offered help. It was the only life she knew, the only one she felt comfortable with.”

  “You can’t help people against their will.” It was a lesson he’d learned while trying to deal with some difficult employees.

  She nodded. “There is a line. I didn’t see it clearly and I crossed it.”

  “You served time for it.” Which, in his opinion, was more than enough atonement. But it meant nothing if Gina didn’t feel the same. The crux of the matter wasn’t whether others could forgive her. “You should forgive yourself,” he said.

  The next hour or so passed mostly in silence as she was likely mulling over her past, and he tried to digest all that he’d found out about her. What she’d done and the fact that she’d been to prison didn’t bother him a bit. He was a businessman with a pretty good sense for measuring people up. Gina Torno was one of the good ones.

  THEY DIDN’T REACH THE four-wheelers until late in the afternoon.

  “We should have brought horses.” There were at least two dozen on the island, higher up from the beach, on the grassy area where Joseph Towers had stables and a corral set up. “Could have spared some walking,” she said, still embarrassed that she’d told Cal about her past. There was something about him—They clicked, which was rare for her with anyone outside her sizable family.