Out of Control (12 page)
Her heart leapt. “Two whole weeks? That’s great, Kenny. Starting . . . ?”
“As soon after 1100 as I can do the paperwork. Things are really light right now, it’s a good time to be away.”
Savannah closed her eyes. Thank God. They could catch a flight out tonight. “That’s wonderful.”
“You bet. Look, I gotta run. You gonna hang there at my place or . . . ?”
“No,” she told him. “I’m going back to the hotel. I’m just going to call a cab.”
“Okay,” he said. “Then I’ll meet you there.”
“Ken?”
“I’m still here.”
“It wasn’t too hokey,” she told him. “What you wrote. It was lovely.”
“Yeah, well, it was either that or tell you just how badly I’m dying to go down on you.” He was laughing, but it was that laughter she’d come to recognize. He was being funny, yes, but he was also dead serious.
Savannah had to sit down. “Well,” she said weakly. “That’s a . . . a lovely thought, too.”
He laughed again. “You bet. Hey, I really gotta go. See you in a few, babe. Love ya.”
With a click, the connection was cut, and Savannah was left staring at the phone. Had he just said . . . ?
No. Love ya was definitely not I love you. He’d signed his note love, as well. It was his default farewell to the woman he was sleeping with. It didn’t mean anything.
It certainly didn’t mean half as much as the fact that he’d gotten two whole weeks off, that he was willing and ready to travel halfway around the world with her.
That he wanted to . . . Savannah laughed aloud, feeling herself blush even though she was completely alone. Lovely thought, indeed.
But it was going to have to wait.
You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.
The next time she came face to face with Kenny, she was going to have to come clean with him. She would tell him everything, tell him she’d come here looking for him, shoot, she’d even tell him about getting his address from Adele.
They’d have a good laugh about how silly she’d been not to tell him the truth from the start, and then he’d take off her clothes and . . .
And later, they’d catch the evening flight to Jakarta, she’d deliver the money to Alex, and that would be that. She and Ken would have two whole weeks together. They could go to Hawaii. Or Australia. Or even back here to San Diego.
Love ya.
This was definitely going to work out.
Jones was at the bar in the Tiki Lounge, nursing a beer when Molly came in.
He didn’t try to hide, but he didn’t try to catch her attention either. He didn’t even look directly at her in the cloudy mirror behind the bottles of hard liquor.
Maybe she was here because she was thirsty. Maybe if he ignored her, she’d order a rum and something with lots of ice, and take it out onto the veranda where the other tourist types sat and watched the sun set over the harbor.
And maybe Ed McMahon was going to come in next and announce that Jones had just won ten million dollars in the American Publishers Clearinghouse sweepstakes.
Why not? This was turning into a night of unexpected visits. Jayakatong Tohjaya—Jaya for short—had left just moments ago. Jaya was an Indonesian entrepreneur who’d recently joined forces with the rebel leader Badaruddin, a self-important military wannabe asshole who had his biggest camp of followers on the island just north of Parwati, and waged an ongoing war with not just the government but also the Zdanowicz brothers, gun and drug runner assholes who operated out of Jakarta.
Jaya was no fool, he hadn’t joined Badaruddin’s private army because he wanted the beret-wearing, camouflage uniform-clad self-awarded general to become Indonesia’s dictator. No, he simply could make more money and have access to better modes of transportation while working as the general’s right-hand man.
Jaya had come right over and sat his skinny butt down next to Jones. He’d heard—island gossip was faster than the digital internet—that Jones’s plane was down, that a vital part of the engine had burned out during the afternoon’s frantic rush to the hospital.
Jaya had even known—somehow—exactly what part Jones needed to fix the Cessna.
And he had a way to get his hands on that very part.
For an exorbitant finder’s fee, Jaya would deliver that part to Jones sometime between tomorrow morning and early next week.
They’d struck a deal, and Jaya had skittered off into the night, on a quest to find insulin shots for a guest of the general’s.
But now Molly appeared. She sat down, of course, on the stool Jaya had recently vacated, of course, and ordered a glass of tropical juice.
Jones took another slug of beer, still not looking at her. But he could see her too well. His peripheral vision had always been too damn good.
Molly Anderson. She’d recently tried to rebraid her thick reddish brown hair, but she was the kind of woman who moved too quickly ever to achieve real tidiness. Bits and pieces of her hair had escaped, some curling wildly in the humidity, some clinging damply to her neck and face.
It was a face that wasn’t even really that pretty. It was too broad, with a too generous mouth that would have been sensuous if she’d bothered to wear lipstick. Which, as far as he knew from his days of living in her tent, she never did.
Her eyes were pretty enough—a light, almost golden, brown. But they had laughter lines around them, showing her age. She had to be closing in on forty, fast, and she’d lived, if not hard, then certainly enthusiastically.
She was wearing the same drab green T-shirt and the cargo shorts that came down nearly to her knees that she’d had on during the flight to Parwati. Leather sandals on her feet.
Pink nail polish on her toes. It was such a contradiction to the lack of lipstick, it fascinated him. He refused to let himself so much as glance at her feet again.
“Joaquin’s going to be okay,” Molly said. “You were right, Mr. Jones. It was an allergic reaction to black market penicillin. His mother gave it to him, thinking it would clear up an infection in his foot.”
He shrugged, still hoping rather futilely that she’d get a clue and leave him alone.
The bartender put a tall glass of juice in front of Molly, and she thanked him, then nearly drained the glass in one long chug.
With her head tipped back, she looked as if she were inviting vampires to dinner. All that pale skin, that long, elegant throat.
Jones was probably the only man in the place who wasn’t staring at her. Terrific, now he had to worry about one of these lowlifes following her out of here.
No, he wasn’t going to think about it. That was her problem. He’d made up his mind weeks ago not to think about her anymore.
But when she put the glass down, and drew a line in the frosty condensation on the outside with one of her long, elegant fingers, he had to force himself not to remember her hands, so cool against his heated forehead and face as he lay, feverish, in her bed.
“I heard about your plane,” she continued. Of course she had. Everyone on the island had heard about his plane. “That you burned out the something or other and have to wait two weeks for the part to come in from Jakarta. I’m so sorry.”
Jones finally looked at her. Because of her, he’d missed his appointment, lost more money than he could believe, and pissed off some very dangerous men in the process. He was stuck in this shithole until tomorrow—and that was the absolute best case scenario. It could well take Jaya a full week to get that part.
And she was sorry.
The real stupid thing was, she was sorry. Most people didn’t mean it when they said it, but Molly Anderson did.
How did she manage to be so goddamn beautiful all the time? Her eyes, her face—they just seemed to shine despite her lack of cosmetics, despite the fact that she wasn’t conventionally pretty, despite the wrinkles and lines. Or maybe because of them. Jones couldn’t figure it out.
“I know you’ve been seriously inconvenienced,” she was telling him, “but if it weren’t for you, Joaquin would have died. So finish your beer. I’m taking you to dinner.”
Oh, no. No way. He was absolutely not going to have dinner with Molly Anderson. “No, thanks.”
“Mr. Jones, I refuse to take no—”
“Look, we’re even now.” His voice came out louder and edgier than he’d intended. He took another pull on his beer and when he spoke again, he managed to sound more matter of fact, more like his normal bored but deadly self. “By flying you down here, I paid you back. I don’t owe you anything else.”
Molly laughed and he had to look away. He pretended to be fascinated by the picture of the Playboy Playmate of July 1987 that was pinned up behind the bar. Faded and tattered around the edges, she hadn’t aged quite so well as Molly.
“I want to treat you to dinner,” she told him. “That means I’ll pay. Honestly, I don’t expect anything else from you.”
“You wanna bet?” He turned slightly on his stool to face her. “You don’t want to take me to dinner. You want to go out with some watered-down, defanged version of me. And I’m telling you right now, I no longer have an obligation to act like some goddamn choir boy around you. We’re even. You still want to have dinner with me? Fine. But you’ve been warned. You’re going to be getting way more than you bargained for.”
He looked directly into her eyes, and let her see that he wanted her, that when he looked at her, when he thought of her, he thought of sex, pure and raw, primitive and pounding. Him hard inside of her, her face flushed with desire as she clung to him. No finesse, no promises, no emotions—just a good old-fashioned banging.
But he should’ve known she wouldn’t scare easily.
She didn’t look away, didn’t blush, didn’t rush out of the bar, scandalized.
No, she just stared right back at him, a slow smile spreading across her face.
“Well,” she said. “You’re mighty sure of yourself, aren’t you, Mr. Jones?”
He let himself look at her wide mouth, imagining just what she could do with lips like that.
And she laughed, rich and thick and throaty, genuinely amused.
“What do you really think is going to happen? That during the hour or so that we have dinner, I’m going to find you so irresistible that I’m going to beg you to come back to my room so I can have you for dessert?” She actually licked her lips, the witch.
And he was the one who started to sweat.
But then she leaned forward so that he had to look into her eyes, not at her mouth anymore. “Get over yourself. Even if you showered and shaved, it’s not likely I’m going to succumb to your vast charms tonight—although I have to admit, your chances would be greatly improved. I do so prefer a man who doesn’t stink.”
This was not the way this scenario was supposed to play out. She was supposed to run away. He was supposed to sit right here at this bar and have another five, six, seven beers until he was too drunk to care about the hard-on she’d just given him.
Molly slipped down off the bar stool. “So cut the macho crap, get off your butt and come have dinner.”
Jones finished his beer and stood up. Let her see what she did to him. Maybe that would give her pause. “You’ve been warned.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said as she led the way out onto the street. She glanced at him, glanced down and smiled. Again, she was genuinely amused. “I’m terrified.”
Love ya.
Ken had actually said, Love ya, right before he’d hung up the phone.
Maybe Savannah hadn’t noticed.
But holy God, maybe she had.
Well, there wasn’t much he could do about it now. The words had slipped out, shocking the hell out of him. Did he really love this woman? After knowing her for just a few hours? After only one night?
One freaking great night.
Savannah clearly felt something for him. She was so not the type to just randomly shack up with a stranger.
Wasn’t she?
Jesus, he’d been hideously wrong about women before.
He headed for Lieutenant Commander Paoletti’s office, paperwork for his two weeks of vacation in hand, both anticipating and dreading seeing Savannah again.
What if he’d royally screwed things up by using the L-word too soon? What if she thought he really meant it and decided he was an emotional imbecile for thinking he could fall in love that quickly?
What if he was an emotional imbecile . . . ?
Johnny Nilsson and Sam Starrett were in the hallway, no doubt exchanging diapering tips. The two officers were his best friends in the world, and they were both married, both relatively new fathers, and lately both as boring as hell.
These days, it seemed as if they were unable to talk about much besides the various types of bowel movements of their children.
It was mind numbing how long they could keep that conversation going.
Well, that wasn’t what he wanted to talk about today.
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