"Jaimie. Say yes."
His voice was husky. His eyes were dark. She could smell the faint scent of man and musk and s.e.x that surrounded them.
There was only one logical response, and she gave it.
She said yes.
He said he"d rented a villa.
What he hadn"t said was that it was a sprawling, magnificent house on a private cay, ten acres of lush green jungle and, yes, pink sand beaches, alone in a turquoise blue sea.
There was a staff. A cook, a housekeeper, a groundskeeper. Jaimie and Zacharias saw them once, when they arrived on the island by boat, and never again. There were always delicious meals in the fridge, the rooms-all open to the sea and sun-were spotless, and the grounds were manicured, but the staff seemed to understand their need for privacy and came and went as if under a cloak of invisibility.
The villa had four bedrooms.
They tried them all. Selected one and made it their own. It was where they took long, luxurious afternoon naps, where they spent the long, wonderful nights in each other"s arms. It was where Jaimie hung all her new clothes after Zach pointed out that she had to let him buy her new things because the jeans, sweaters and jacket she"d brought with her weren"t really suitable for sunny, hot days and moonlit, warm nights.
They went to Na.s.sau, on New Providence island, where the elegant boutiques on Bay Street rivaled those of Milan and Paris and New York.
Zach bought everything Jaimie so much as touched until she figured that out and stopped touching.
After that, he bought her everything she looked at.
"I want to," he kept saying, and she ended up with bikinis and long cotton sundresses and shorts and T-shirts and scarves and sandals. She told him that the boat he"d sailed them in would surely sink under the weight of so many packages and boxes and bags.
The boat, of course, would never have done anything so plebian.
It was a brand new J/88 and before setting sail, she had let him tell her all about sailing; she even let him show her how to cast off and she"d listened patiently to him explain that the ropes on a boat were properly called lines, but once they were at sea, the wind shifted and before he could say anything, she trimmed the jib.
"You know sailboats," he said.
Jaimie admitted that she did. "I learned to sail the summer I was ten."
"In Texas?"
The stark disbelief in those words made her laugh. She shoved back her wind-tossed hair and told him that she and her sisters had spent a month at a camp in Maine that summer while their father was there on some kind of presidential staff a.s.signment, and then she looked at him and frowned.
"When did I tell you I was from Texas?"
Zach felt the world stand still. She hadn"t; they"d never talked about where either of them had grown up. He knew she"d been born and raised in Texas because he knew two of her brothers, but she didn"t know that.
This was his opening. It was the right time to confess everything. It would be hard; she would be upset. She"d push him away, and his job was to protect her.
He went for sounding like a guy who"d either forgotten a conversation or made a good guess.
"I don"t remember," he said, "Or maybe you gave things away with that accent."
For a tiny fraction of time, he could almost see the logical part of her brain turning over his answer, examining it from every direction.
Then she fluttered her lashes like a perfect southern belle.
"You are wrong, suh. I do not have an accent of any kahnd whatsoevah."
He laughed, and she laughed, and the part of his brain that was sly and reptilian warned that he couldn"t expect to pull this off forever. Sooner or later, his men would catch Young in the act, and she could press charges.
When that happened, he would have no choice but to confess everything.
Then what?
Protecting her was one thing, but it wasn"t the real reason he was afraid for her to know the facts.
If there was one thing hot days and warm nights alone with Jaimie had done, it was to make him admit that she mattered to him.
He wanted more of this, whatever this was.
And he wasn"t sure he could ever walk away from it.
They were happy at the villa.
There was time to relax, lie in the sun, and sleep late. Life took on a lazy rhythm.
They sailed. They swam. They slow-danced on the beach to music from the villa"s sound system.
And they talked.
Zach had been to lots of places around the world. So had Jaimie. They"d been to some of the same places, maybe even at the same time.
"If you were in stationed in Spain your first overseas tour," Jaimie said as they strolled along the sh.o.r.e while the sun dipped toward the sea, "you were, what, eighteen?"
"Uh huh."
"So, let me see, I was twelve. And my father was in Spain and we flew there that summer." She looked up at him and smiled. "Just think! We might have met."
Zach curved his arm more tightly around her waist.
"Good thing we didn"t," he said, returning that smile. "You"d have been jail bait."
She laughed. "And you wouldn"t have been interested."
"Well, no. I was too busy discovering that European women thought it was cool to go topless on the beach." He grinned. "It was one h.e.l.l of a revelation."
"We crossed paths without knowing it."
"The daughters of generals don"t cross path with grunts, babe. They hardly breathe the same air."
Jaimie stopped, bent down and picked up a small pink seash.e.l.l. As far as Zach could tell, it looked like the zillion other sh.e.l.ls she"d picked up over the last ten days, but he already knew better than to mention that.
"But you could have crossed paths with my brothers," she said, tucking the little sh.e.l.l into the pocket of her shorts. "Did I tell you they were all in the service? Well, two of them. Not the third. My brother, Caleb, was in some secret agency. Kind of like you."
"What do you mean, like me?"
Was his tone a little sharp? Maybe, because Jaimie gave him a strange look.
"That"s what you said, Zacharias. That you"d been in some sort of "if I tell you, I"ll have to kill you" government organization, remember?"
"Yeah. Well, you know how it is. The government figures the alphabet is theirs to toss around. Sometimes I think they must have an Acronym Department."
She laughed. He let out his breath. How much longer could he lie to her? Didn"t he trust himself to tell her the truth? Or didn"t he trust her? What did he mean to her? What did she feel for him? Did he matter enough for her to overlook the lies?
d.a.m.n.
Where was he going with this? He-he cared for her. And if she-if she cared for him...
"Zacharias?"
"Jaimie." He stopped walking, turned toward her, took her hands in his. "Honey. We need to talk."
He"d expected her to say, "Talk about what?" or "We are talking." But she didn"t. Instead, she gave him a steady, sobering look and said that yes, they did.
"I love it here," she said softly.
He smiled and brought her hands to his lips.
"But," she said, "we can"t live on an island forever."
"The place is ours for as long as we want it."
"It isn"t that. It"s...I have a job."
"You said yourself, this is the slow season."
"It is. Still, I can"t stay away forever."
"Jaimie. Honey, I have enough money for-"
She put her fingers over his lips.
"Thank you. But I"d never..." She took a breath. "I have to go home eventually. We both do. We can"t-we can"t continue to live in this-this beautiful dream."
Was that what this was? A beautiful dream? If it was, he didn"t want to wake up.
"Surely, another couple of weeks... What?"
"Being here, with you, away from everything... It"s given me time to think."
His gut tightened. What was this? The kiss-off?
"About me. And the future. And my job."
Zach felt his knees go weak. "Your job?"
She nodded. "See, I thought I"d like real estate. Dealing with numbers, but in a different way." She shrugged. "Now I see that it"s not for me. I don"t really feel comfortable trying to convince people to list a property with me or to buy one, for that matter." She laughed. "I guess I proved it that night in New York. I think I must have made the worst presentation ever."
Zach slipped his arms around her.
"What you proved that night," he said softly, "was that there isn"t another woman like you in the world."
Jaimie smiled. "You proved the same thing, Zacharias. There"s no other man like you. No one."
Her words made his heart soar-and made it ache. Would she still think that once she knew the truth?
He blanked out the thought, bent to her and kissed her.
"The thing is," she said, when the kiss ended, "I"ve decided to go back to what I know and love. Accounting. When we get home, I"m going to get in touch with some people I know and see if... Why are you looking at me that way?"
The sun, enormous and scarlet and unimaginably beautiful, was just touching the sea.
"There are accounting firms in Manhattan."
"Well, sure. But-"
"Jaimie." Zach slid his hands up her arms, clasped her shoulders. "Leave Washington. Come to New York." He took a deep breath. "Live with me."
She stared at him. Her expression was unreadable. He"d caught her by surprise, but he"d caught himself by surprise, too. He"d never lived with a woman, never even considered it, but this was different. This was Jaimie. His Jaimie.
"I"ve never lived with anyone."
He nodded. "Neither have I."
"It"s a-it"s a huge step."
He nodded again. "I know."
"A huge step," she said again in a husky whisper. "I mean, what if it"s a mistake? What if it turns out we shouldn"t have-"
"It won"t be a mistake." His hands tightened on her. "I-I care for you, Jaimie. More than I ever imagined I"d care for anyone. I want to start my days looking at you across the breakfast table, end them with you in my arms at night." He cleared his throat. "Move in with me, sweetheart. Say "yes.""
There were a thousand reasons to say no. Practical, logical, sensible reasons.
There was one reason to say yes.
That reason was Zacharias.
Jaimie smiled. The smile became a soft laugh. Then she rose on her toes, wrapped her arms around her lover"s neck, and kissed him.