“What?”
Karen glanced at Eliza, gave her a half smile. “You gonna tell him or am I?”
Eliza studied her shoes. “I-I, ah…not sure how to tell you this, Blake.”
He felt a headache coming on. “What?”
“Your sister…Neil…”
His skin grew cold. “What?”
“They have this thing…”
“A thing? What the hell kind of a thing?” His blood pumped hard in his chest. Neil and his sister? How had he missed this?
“It’s not a thing like you’re thinking,” Karen added. “They’ve never acted on it.”
Acted on what? Now he was really confused.
Eliza tossed her hands in the air. “It’s like this. She’s always had it bad for him. I noticed in Texas last year. She never really opened up to me about it. But I’m guessing she said something to you, Karen.”
Karen shrugged. “Yeah. I knew. It’s not like she’s been subtle. Neil, for whatever reason, hasn’t ever acted on what is obvious to everyone.”
Blake erupted. “Well it sure as hell wasn’t obvious to me.”
“You’ve been a little busy,” Eliza said. “Either way. It’s safe to say I think Neil cares for Gwen on a much deeper level than as a job. Otherwise why would he have reacted the way he did?”
Blake sucked in a deep breath. “Where the hell does Carter keep his whiskey?”
Gwen moved around the bathroom with a towel holding her newly dyed hair. She hand-washed her clothes and draped them over the towel rack and the edge of the sink. She wore her nightgown, the only clean item of clothing in her bag, and nothing else. She’d wanted a hot shower and ended with a tepid one at best. It was a blessing that the heat in Utah was in the triple digits, giving the water an extra degree or two within the pipes.
Once she finished washing her last pair of underwear, she turned toward the mirror. “Well, Gwen. Let’s see what you look like with brown hair.”
With all her brave words and intentions, she couldn’t go red. Not yet. Baby steps, she told herself. The natural state of her platinum blonde hair would appear different with any darker color…so she chickened out and used the brown. And then didn’t leave it in all that long.
She twisted the towel off her head and shook out her wet locks.
Not bad. Not fabulous, but not awful either. Without a hair dryer, Gwen used her brush to pull some of the wetness from her hair.
With nothing left to do, she opened the door and stepped on the comforter on the floor.
Neil sat on the bed watching the television, which was tuned to a local news station.
“Well? What do you think?” She spun in a circle.
Neil found the remote and turned down the set. He glanced at her head and then let his gaze slide down her body.
“I like it.”
He didn’t. She could tell, but he wasn’t going to say anything against it.
She ran her fingers through it. “It’s not awful. Probably looks better dry.”
“How long before it washes out?”
“A few days.” Which was the only reason she did it. “Bathroom’s yours. There is laundry…everywhere.”
“No helping that. The air conditioner isn’t the best. Seems a little cooler in here to me.”
Barely. But being clean made up for the heat. A fan over the bed spun and moved the air.
Neil moved around the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.
On second appraisal, the room was even worse than she thought. With hardly enough room to walk between the bed and the furniture, the only option was to sit on the bed. Gwen peeked outside and found only a glow of a distant room and a streetlight.
“At least it’s quiet.”
The local news talked about a break in the heat wave over the next few days, which was something Gwen looked forward to. The heat wore on her after a while. Perhaps it was her upbringing in Europe that made her intolerant to excessive heat.
The bed was surprisingly comfortable. The king-size bed.
There’s only one bed.
The implications of that fact hit her and she smiled.
And when the shower turned off, she felt her skin heat with expectation.
A short while later Neil emerged from the bathroom. He wore only a towel around his hips. What she saw brought a gasp from her lips.
“Oh my God, Neil…I had no idea.” She shot from the bed and stood at his side.
His glanced down at his own massive chest, which filled the doorway better than any man ever could.
“Impossible to escape the military without one.”
The ink spread over his left shoulder and wrapped around his back. It wasn’t a picture of a face or animal…or even a symbol she recognized. Rather it swirled and spiked and flowed with his skin. It was raw and urgent, just like the man. “What is it?” She traced it with her fingertips.
“A tribal tattoo. Some of us were on leave. Got drunk.”
She couldn’t picture him out of control enough to allow this. “Do you regret it?” She hoped not. She thought it suited him perfectly. The muscles on his back rippled under her touch.
“Too many other things in life to regret. This isn’t one of them.”
She couldn’t stop touching him. Didn’t want to. She ran her fingernail along the swirls as if the ink were a living thing. “I had no idea this was hiding behind your clothing.” Mesmerized she reached the final spike below his rib cage and worked her way back up. “What is it Americans say…go big or go home?”
His chest rumbled with a short laugh.
She followed her finger with her gaze. “You don’t do anything partway…do you?”
“Do it right, or don’t do it at all,” he said under his breath.
She grinned now, and moved her gaze to his.
Her breath caught with the intensity of his stare.
She flattened her palm on his chest and licked her lips. One subtle movement of her hand and he caught it in his. For one awful moment, she thought he’d peel her off.
“I’m not an easy man, Gwendolyn.”
“I never wanted easy.”
She matched his stare and her breath quickened.
He released her hand and pushed his fingers into her hair. He studied her face, like only Neil did…as if searching for the answers in life. If she could give them to him, she would. There was a vulnerability in his gaze that she wanted to make disappear.
And when he gripped the back of her hair, and pulled her into his embrace, he took control.