Barefoot With a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover Book 2)

Barefoot with a Stranger

Barefoot Bay Undercover #2

Roxanne St. Claire

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Barefoot Bay Undercover…where love is in the air and suspense will heat up the sand. Like every book set in Barefoot Bay, this novel stands entirely alone, but why stop at just one? Kick off your shoes and fall in love in Barefoot Bay!

The Barefoot Bay Billionaires

Secrets on the Sand
(ALWAYS FREE!)

Seduction on the Sand

Scandal on the Sand

The Barefoot Bay Brides

Barefoot in White
(ALWAYS FREE!)

Barefoot in Lace

Barefoot in Pearls

Barefoot Bay Undercover

Barefoot Bound
(prequel)

Barefoot with a Bodyguard

Barefoot with a Stranger

Barefoot with a Bad Boy

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http://www.roxannestclaire.com/newsletter.html

Dedication

This one is for Kristi Yanta, the Picky Editor without equal, whose delicate touch magically transforms my lifeless first draft into living, breathing color. I would crumble and cry (even more) over every book without her.

Chapter One

Chessie squinted at the departures screen and adjusted her glasses, certain she had to be reading the numbers wrong. Her connection was delayed for
three
hours?

Sheesh. This was not in Francesca Rossi’s carefully laid-out plan for tonight.

She turned away, spinning through her options like they were hypothetical computer bugs she needed to identify and eliminate. But this was not a tech issue she could solve with a few smart keystrokes. This was Atlanta Hartsfield Airport, full of grumbling travelers trapped by the stormy night skies and widespread delays for many flights, not just her commuter hop to southwest Florida where her brother waited.

The jammed gate area practically vibrated with frustration and inconvenience. Behind her, the concourse bustled with impatient people rolling their bags, and the airport restaurant teemed with captive customers. Leaning against a sliver of space on the wall, Chessie pulled out her phone and texted her brother Gabe to deliver news she knew would elicit enough cursing to stroke out a nun.

Gabe had been breathing fire down her neck for weeks, desperate to get Chessie to Barefoot Bay to help accomplish what he called “the plan.”

The plan.
Chessie loved a plan as much—probably more—than the next person and appreciated a clever and succinct title to sit on top of a well-ordered list. But this plan?

There were no fancy covert names, like
Operation BabyLift
or
Mission: Munchkin
for this project. Locating a child that could be Gabe’s son was too serious and too major for cutesy code words.

Weeks earlier, Gabe had flown Chessie down to Florida and enlisted her help in hacking an encrypted website to search for a woman supposedly living in Cuba. She didn’t know who Isadora Winter was or why Gabe wanted to find her, but when Chessie discovered the woman was dead, Gabe’s response told Chessie plenty. Isadora
mattered
to him. A lot. So Chessie had dug deeper into the layers of code to discover that Isadora had a child…named Gabriel.

And that news had stunned them both.

Her phone buzzed with Gabe’s reply.
WTF? Get your ass on another flight!

She looked at the board again, which flashed with even more cancellations. She
still
didn’t know why she couldn’t do her computer research from Boston, where she worked as a tech specialist for the Guardian Angelinos, their family’s security firm. But Gabe had insisted she return to the Gulf Coast island where he was running his own security-type of business, and he also insisted she tell no one about the child or their plans to find him.

That last bit wasn’t a surprise. Like the rest of her siblings and cousins, ex-spook Gabe was always up to something adventurous and dangerous and secretive, saving lives and taking names.

But not Chessie. The youngest in a long line of bodyguards, investigators, cops, agents, and spies, she was convinced that the Rossi and Angelino gene pool must have run out of the Badass DNA by the time she emerged. She was happiest in front of a computer monitor. Her idea of a brush with danger was refuctoring a line of code to make it irreversible. And maybe, when she felt wild, kicking her Mustang into fourth gear and doing doughnuts in an empty parking lot.

Her phone flashed with another text from her brother.

Fly to Orlando or Tampa, rent a car and drive. Or rent one in Atlanta and drive all night. You can be here in time for Nino’s peppers and eggs.

There weren’t going to be flights to Orlando or Tampa, and while the idea of her grandfather’s signature breakfast sounded heavenly, Gabe was smoking something if he thought she was going to drive eight or nine hours at night in this weather.

Not in the plan, bro.

She texted back a sisterly “shut your pie hole” and peered over the gate crowd again, catching sight of a woman getting up to free a seat near the back. Shouldering the oversized handbag that carried her laptop and grateful she’d checked her suitcase, Chessie headed straight to the vacancy. She was two feet away when a middle-age man with a shiny dome and mustache beat her, practically throwing his backside into the chair to make sure he got it before she did.

Chessie slammed on her brakes with a soft grunt, a little taken aback at his audacity. The man whipped out an iPad and ignored her, leaving Chessie feeling awkward as a few people stared at her. She glanced around on the off chance there was another open seat.

Not happening. Her gaze landed on the man in the chair directly across from the one she’d almost snagged, meeting dark eyes that glinted with a mix of dismay and humor. Instantly, he stood.

“Here, take mine.”

“Oh, no, I…” Damn, he was big. Not just tall, but solid and broad. “That’s not necessary.”

“I insist.”

She started to reply but got a little lost while looking at his face, which was pretty much a straight-up dime. A rugged blend of chiseled and rough, a strong nose, soft lips, and a shadow of whiskers that didn’t quite hide a cleft in his chin that was downright
lickable
.

She shook her head. “I…I…can’t.” Can’t think or talk, apparently.

Slowly becoming aware of her surroundings again, she realized most everyone in earshot observed the exchange—but not the tacky seat-thief.

“Please. It would be rude of me to let you stand there.” He put the slightest emphasis on
rude
, more of a deep rumble from that impressive chest, and a few onlookers shifted their attention to the
truly
rude guy. Who didn’t look up from a riveting game of Words With Friends.

“Nope, you had it first.” Chessie smiled up at him. “Giving your seat away would be a breach of airport protocol.”

“What about gentleman’s protocol?”

Oh, a gentleman. A big, hot, sexy,
lickable
gentleman. “You would set dangerous precedent,” she agreed. “Every man in this place would have to get up and let the ladies sit.”

“It could start a riot.” He added a smile that was purely unfair.

“But you’d be a national hero.”

The smile faded, and he shrugged a little, as if hero status held no appeal for him. Well, he certainly held appeal for her.

Easy, girl. You’re nursing a heartbreak, remember?
But one look at thick black hair that curled over his collar and framed chiseled features and a slash of black brows…and she pretty much forgot good ol’ Matt Whatshisname.

The seat-stealer cleared his throat without looking up from his iPad. “Do us all a favor and go flirt with each other in the bar.”

The man standing in front of her flinched ever so slightly, his eyes flicking to the right but not actually shooting the chair hog a proper dirty look. Instead, he gave Chessie a slow, conspiratorial grin that took him straight to an eleven. And a half.

For one, two, maybe the span of three insane heartbeats, they looked at each other, and at least one X in every female chromosome in her body climbed out of their breakup funk to momentarily consider what else was out there.

He openly checked her out for a few seconds, his gaze practically feasting on her face, then the faintest shrug gave her the impression he’d lost some kind of inner battle.

He nodded toward the concourse. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Chessie opened her mouth to say no. She hadn’t planned on a drink. But she hadn’t planned on a three-hour delay between Boston and Barefoot Bay, either. Gabe hadn’t said she couldn’t talk to anyone, just not share why she was on her way to Florida.

For once, she should go with the flow because this particular flow was so fine. “Sure, thanks.”

The man leaned over to grab a duffel bag, then turned and got in the seat-stealer’s face. “I owe you one, dickhead,” he whispered.

As they walked away, a woman watching the whole exchange gave a loud, slow clap, and a few others joined her.

Well, what do you know? A drink with a smokin’ hot stranger. That was an interesting change in plan.

* * *

Mal knew they’d be watching him from the minute he walked out of Allenwood Federal Correctional Institution and started his journey. But he honestly didn’t think they’d be so damn obvious about it, throwing a tag team at him, using the tired cliché of a sexy woman being mistreated by a smartass stranger.

They must truly believe he didn’t know how to spot or shake a tail. Maybe they’d forgotten who he really was. Maybe they figured four years on the wrong side of a cell door had destroyed his finely trained skills along with his spirit. Maybe they were all a pack of idiots with no imagination.

For his part, Mal had taken and dumped two different cars, then boarded a train, followed by a Greyhound to Atlanta, and now he just wanted to fly to his final destination, for God’s sake. But he mustn’t have been clever or deceptive enough, because the babe and her buddy nailed him like a wanted poster on a tree.

Mal hung back as the hostess led them to a table, taking the opportunity to check out the woman they’d sent to soften him up.

Well, nothing about him would be soft around this woman, and they’d know that. She had that thick, inky black hair he’d always liked, though sloppily braided and hanging down to the middle of her back. It wasn’t her hair that got his attention, though. Or her ass, though it was perfection, round and high and youthful in faded jeans. It swayed side to side, powered by boots with just enough heel to tap a drumbeat on his stretched-to-the-limits libido.

All very nice. But it was her smile that drew him closer, and proved the CIA knew him all too well. Somewhere in a file in Langley, it probably said “sucker for a smile that lights up a face.” And hers looked like someone had struck a match in her heart.

So he followed and played their game. Because he wanted to know how far they’d go. And he wanted to look at that smile. Shit, he wanted to eat it.

When they sat down, she ordered an Amstel Light but said no to a frosty mug. Beer from the bottle. Okay, that was hot.

Of course, he was a man six days out of federal prison, and she was the first female he’d talked to in three and a half years who wasn’t washing his clothes or shoveling chow onto a plate. So she could have ordered piss in a bucket and he’d have probably sprung a boner.

“Thanks for the rescue,” she said after the waitress left, crossing her arms to settle her elbows on the table and lean in enough to treat him to a glimpse of skin thanks to the open top button of an expensive-looking sweater. “I think we shamed him effectively.”

Yeah, sweet thing. Like you two didn’t plan that since you followed my ass to the gate.

“He should be ashamed,” Mal agreed. And so should Mal if he let a little cleavage make him forget how
not
unplanned this meeting was.