He shouldn't have waited as long as he had. As soon as he'd been able to get around okay, he should have come after her. She had been living in fear, and handling it the same way she had in Benghazi, with calm determination. He didn't want her ever to be afraid again. Bunny's and Spooky's arrival at the parking deck, in Bunny's personally customized 1969 Oldsmobile 442, had been like a reunion. Barrie had tumbled out of the rental car with a happy cry and been enthusiastically hugged and twirled around by both SEALs. They were both discreetly armed, he'd noticed approvingly. They were wearing civilian clothes, with their shirts left loose outside their pants to conceal the firepower tucked under their arms and in the smalls of their backs. Normally, when they were off- duty, they didn't carry firearms, but Zane had explained the situation to them and left their preparations to their own discretion, since he wasn't their commanding officer any longer. In typical fashion, they had prepared for anything. His own weapon was still resting in a holster under his left armpit, covered by a lightweight summer jacket.
'Don't you worry none, ma'am,' Spooky had reassuringly told Barrie. 'We'll get you and the boss to the airport safe and sound. There's nothing outside of NASCAR that can keep up with Bunny's wheels.'
'I'm sure there isn't,' she'd replied, eyeing the car. It looked unremarkable enough; Bunny had painted it a light gray, and there wasn't any more chrome than would be on a factory job. But the deep-throated rumble from the idling engine didn't sound like any sound a factory engine would make, and the tires were wide, with a soft-looking tread.
'Bulletproof glass, reinforced metal,' Bunny said proudly as he helped Zane transfer her luggage to the trunk of his car. 'Plate steel would be too heavy for the speed I want, so I went with the new generation of body armor material, lighter and stronger than Kevlar. I'm still working on the fireproofing.'
'I'll feel perfectly safe,' she assured him.
As she and Zane crawled into the back seat of the two-door car, she whispered to him, 'Where's Nascar?'
Spooky could hear a pin drop at forty paces. Slowly he turned around in the front seat, his face mirroring his incredulity. 'Not where, ma'am,' he said, struggling with shock.
'Oh,' Barrie said, giving him an apologetic smile. 'I've spent a lot of time in Europe. I don't know anything about racing except for the Grand Prix races.'
Bunny snorted in derision. 'Play cars,' he said dismissively. 'You can't run them on the streets. Stock car racing, now that's real racing.' As he was speaking, he was wheeling his deceptive monster out of the parking deck, his restless gaze touching on every surrounding detail.
'I've been to horse races,' Barrie offered, evidently in an attempt to redeem herself.
Zane controlled a smile at the earnestness of her tone. 'Do you ride?' he asked.
Her attention swung to him. 'Why, yes. I love horses.'
'You'll make a good Mackenzie, then,' Spooky drawled. 'Boss raises horses in his spare time.' There was a bit of irony in his tone, because SEALs had about as much spare time as albinos had color.
'Do you really?' Barrie asked, her eyes shining.
'I own a few. Thirty or so.'
'Thirty!' She sat back, a slight look of confusion on her face. He knew what she was thinking: one horse was expensive to own and keep, let alone thirty. Horses needed a lot of land and care, not something she associated with an ex-Naval officer who had been a member of an elite antiterrorism group.
'It's a family business,' he explained, swiveling his head to examine the traffic around them.
'Everything's clear, boss,' Bunny said. 'Unless they've tagged us with a relay, but I don't see how that's possible.'
Zane didn't, either, so he relaxed. A moving relay surveillance took a lot of time and coordination to set up, and the route had to be known. Bunny was taking such a circuitous route to the airport that any tail would long since have been revealed or shaken. Things were under control—for now.
They made it to National without incident, though to be on the safe side Bunny and Spooky had escorted them as far as the security check. While Zane quietly handled his own armed passage through security, his two former team members had taken themselves off to collect the rental car and turn it in, though to the agency office at Dulles, not National, where he had rented it. Just another little twist to delay anyone who was looking for them.
Now that they were safely on the plane, he began planning what he would do to put an end to the situation.
The first part of it was easy. He would put Chance on the job of finding out what kind of mess her father was involved in; for her sake, he hoped it wasn't anything treasonous, but whatever was going on, he intended to put a stop to it. Chance had access to information that put national security agencies to shame. If William Lovejoy was selling out his country, then he would go down. There was no other option. Zane had spent his adult years offering his life in protection of his country, and now he was a peace officer sworn to uphold the law; it was impossible for him to look the other way, even for Barrie. He didn't want her to be hurt, but he damn sure wanted her to be safe.
Barrie slept until the airliner's wheels bounced on the pavement. She sat upright, pushing her hair away from her face, looking about with a slight sense of disorientation. She had never before been able to sleep on a plane; this sleepiness was just one more of the many changes her pregnancy was making in her body, and her lack of control over the process was disconcerting, even frightening.
On the other hand, the rest had given her additional energy, something she needed to face the immense change she was about to make in her life. This change was deliberate, but no less frightening.
'I want to shower and change clothes first,' she said firmly. This marriage might be hasty, without any resemblance to the type of wedding ceremony she had always envisioned for herself, but while she was willing to forgo the pomp and expensive trappings, she wasn't willing — outside of a life-and-death situation — to get married wearing wrinkled clothes and still blinking sleep from her eyes.
'Okay. We'll check in to a hotel first.' He rubbed his jaw, his callused fingers rasping over his beard stubble. 'I need to have a shave anyway.'
He had needed to shave that day in Benghazi, too. In a flash of memory she felt again the scrape of his rough chin against her naked breasts, and a wave of heat washed over her, leaving her weak and flushed. The cool air blowing from the tiny vent overhead was suddenly not cool enough.
She hoped he wouldn't notice, but it was a faint hope, because he was trained to take note of every detail around him. She imagined he could describe every passenger within ten rows of them in either direction, and when she'd been awake she had noticed that he'd shown an uncanny awareness of anyone approaching them from the rear on the way to the lavatories.
'Are you feeling sick?' he asked, eyeing the color in her cheeks.
'No, I'm just a little warm,' she said with perfect truth, while her blush deepened.
He continued to watch her, and the concern in his eyes changed to a heated awareness. She couldn't even hide that from him, damn it. From the beginning it had been as if he could see beneath her skin; he sensed her reactions almost as soon as she felt them.
Slowly his heavy-lidded gaze moved down to her breasts, studying the slope and thrust of them. She inhaled sharply as her nipples tightened in response to his blatant interest, a response that shot all the way to her loins.
'Are they more sensitive?' he murmured.
Oh, God, he shouldn't do this to her, she thought wildly. They were in the middle of a plane full of people, taxiing toward an empty gate, and he was asking questions about her breasts and looking as if he would start undressing her any minute now.
'Are they?'
'Yes,' she whispered. Her entire body felt more sensitive, from both her pregnancy and her acute awareness of him. Soon he would be her husband, and once again she would be lying in his arms.
'Ceremony first,' he said, his thoughts echoing hers in that eerie way he had. 'Otherwise we won't get out of the hotel until tomorrow.'
'Are you psychic?' she accused under her breath.
A slow smile curved his beautiful mouth. 'It doesn't take a psychic to know what those puckered nipples mean.'
She glanced down and saw her nipples plainly beaded under the lace and silk of her bra and blouse. Her face red, she hastily drew her shirt over the betraying little nubs, and he gave a low laugh. At least no one else was likely to have heard him, she thought with scant
