Читать книгу Born To Protect - Virginia Kantra - Страница 11

It figured that the exiled princess of Montebello didn’t live in an apartment. Jack realized his mistake as soon as Christina swung her new-model pickup truck onto a private road flanked by stone columns. A discreet plaque identified the entrance to Eagle’s Nest Residential Community. No Soliciting, the sign said. Not Welcome.

The truck swooped down curves and up hills. Through stands of tall, dark trees, wide windows flashed. Jack glimpsed piles of rock and spires of wood, some natural, some man-made.

They sure didn’t look like any graduate student digs he’d ever seen.

He was way out of his league here, he thought grimly. What had Christina called it? Some ill-judged sexual attraction. Yeah.

And yet every time he looked at her—hell, even when he didn’t—he got this brain-fog image of her rising out of the lake, her magnificent body covered with water and sunshine and not much else. She had great breasts. He looked across at her aristocratic profile and imagined her wearing one skimpy nylon triangle. He looked out at the scenery and imagined her naked.

And the pictures in his head were making him cross-eyed.

He rubbed the back of his neck, where the muscles cramped as his shoulder stiffened. Focus, he ordered himself. Before he’d left the SEALs, his survival and the survival of his team had depended on his ability to concentrate. Now…well, hers might.

That realization cleared his brain, at least temporarily. He sat up as Christina maneuvered into a sunken driveway and shifted the truck into Park. Her garage was buried in the side of a hill. A stone walk wound from the drive to the house, all angles and cedar and glass.

Whoa. Jack climbed out. Looked up. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

Christina’s face got that frosty look he was beginning to realize covered self-consciousness. “The house was one of my father’s conditions for my remaining at the university. It has a state-of-the-art security system.”

He bet it did. Not that that would stop a terrorist. Not that it could stop him or Merlin or Crack or any of the SEALs, if they had time and the inclination to break in. Jack followed her up a hill landscaped with ferns and wild-flowers. She had a nice…walk. The soaring windows overhead reflected back the red and gold of the afternoon sun.

Once upon a time there was a princess who lived in a tower….

She unlocked the massive door. The foyer was flagstone, paneled in some light wood and pierced with windows. She pressed a security code into the keypad by the door.

“No armed guards at the gate?” Jack asked dryly.

Her eyes gleamed with humor. He liked that, liked that she was able to laugh at herself. “The only communities in Montana with armed guards are survivalist compounds. Even my father drew the line at my living in one of those. Please.” She stepped forward briskly, like a White House tour guide. “Make yourself at home.”

He grimaced. “Right.”

Home had never looked like this.

It wasn’t that the Daltons didn’t have money. Jonathan Dalton may have been a lousy husband and father, but he was a great provider. His wife, Clara, had filled her empty days with shopping, her empty home with velvet sofas and walnut tables and china doodads.

Jack parked his seabag at the bottom of the curving staircase and pivoted slowly, taking in Christina’s wide-open living room: cordovan leather couches and deco lamps, bleached wood floors and rich carpets. Paintings hung like jewels on the high white walls. He didn’t know a whole lot about art, but that one over the fireplace, all curving blues and greens, looked like a Chagall. And he’d bet the ranch it wasn’t a copy.

Oh, yeah. Out of his league and in over his head. He stuck his hands in his pockets.

“I’m sorry if it’s not…” Christina hesitated. “I don’t have time to spend on housekeeping. And my cleaning service won’t be in until Monday.”

She wasn’t serious. Was she? What did she think—that he was going to order her to stand inspection?

“I left the white gloves behind with the uniform, princess. But if you’re looking for compliments, you’ve got a really nice place here. Classy. You want me to take off my shoes?”

She tipped her chin up. “Of course not. I…the phone’s in the kitchen,” she said, and escaped across the Oriental carpet.

The red sun bled through the tall windows on either side of the fireplace. Jack glanced out on a tumble of rocks and plants. Plenty of cover for a sniper there. He wondered if her glass was bulletproof.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Whiskey? Wine? Tea?”

He cradled the receiver between his neck and shoulder, fishing in his wallet for his father’s number. “Got any beer?”

“I’m sorry. No.”

For a princess, she sure was quick to apologize. He shook his head. “Never mind. Water is fine.”

He listened to the phone ring on the other end of the line.

And ring. Jonathan Dalton wasn’t home. Well, that figured. For sixteen years, the old man had never been around when Jack wanted him. Of course, a couple of months after Jack’s mother died, the major had decided to take a stab at fatherhood, and that had been even worse.

Jack depressed the phone hook and dialed again, aware of Christina pulling glasses from the cupboard behind him.

“Global Enterprises,” the receptionist chirped. “How may I direct your call?”

“Jonathan Dalton, please.”

“May I tell him who’s calling?”

“Jack Dalton.”

“Who?”

He heard his teeth snap together. “His son.”

Christina put his water on the counter by his hand. Her warm fingers left imprints on the cold glass. He nodded thanks and picked it up as a different female voice came on the line.

“Mr. Dalton? This is Elizabeth Landry, your father’s executive assistant. He’s not available to take your call right now. May I help you?”

Jack put the water down untasted. “No. Thanks. Tell him he can reach me at this number, please.” He rattled off the number on Christina’s phone. “Got that? Yeah. Anytime tonight. Thanks.” He hung up the phone and found Christina watching him, her mermaid hair and wide blue eyes like something out of a sailor’s fantasy.

His fantasies. Smooth, dark water around long, pale thighs…

Don’t go there, Flash.

“I can’t reach the old man. Looks like we’ll have to wait for him to call us.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“No.” He couldn’t decipher the faint question in her eyes. Surprise? Disapproval? “We’re not exactly close,” he said.

“Why is that?”

He didn’t want to go into it. Not ever, and especially not with Princess Perfect here. But given that he’d just been drooling over the illustrated story of her life, it seemed only fair to give her a quick and dirty rundown on The Daltons: the Dysfunctional Years.

“When my father decided he’d finally had enough of selling his services to the highest bidder, I was sixteen years old and full of myself. I was used to being the man of the house. Nobody was going to tell me what to do, especially not some guy I didn’t set eyes on more than once a year. We had a couple of years with him playing the heavy father and me acting like the jerk son before he decided to ship me off to West Point and let the army turn me into an officer and a gentleman.”

She regarded him steadily. Her interest warmed him, made him awkward. “And was your army up for this enormous task?”

He shrugged. “We’ll never know. I ran off and enlisted in the navy.”

“Your father—he was upset?”

“He was a hypocrite. He was enlisted. Went mustang in Korea.”

Her blond brows drew together. “What does that mean? ‘Mustang’?”

“It’s a term for an enlisted man who comes up through the ranks and makes the jump to officer. It doesn’t happen often.”

“And because he did it, you wanted to do the same. You wanted to make him proud of you.”

Jack shrugged uncomfortably. “It wasn’t that. I just didn’t want him using his money, his influence, to get me an officer’s berth. I didn’t want what he could do for me.”

Christina smiled ruefully. “Yes. I understand. Still, to give up your chance for a college education…”

“When I was eighteen, my head so stuffed with big ideas, a college education would have been wasted on me.”

“Learning is never wasted,” she said firmly.

She would think that. She was a microbiologist. Microbial ecologist, he corrected himself. She probably had enough letters after her name to qualify as a government program.

“I went back for it six years later,” he said, surprising them both by his need to explain. “Night school. I had the discipline for it then.”

“You got your degree while you were a SEAL?”

The disbelief in her voice made him wince. He should have kept his trap shut. “It’s not that unusual. When you’re a SEAL, you’ve got to be the best.”

“You make me a little ashamed,” she said softly. “I never had to combine classes with work. All I’ve ever done is study.”

“Well, you must be good at it. Made good grades. Got a good job.”

“Yes.” She gave him a small, twisted smile that sneaked inside him. “I’m a much better scientist than I am a princess.”

Oh, no. He was not going to fall for that poor-little-princess routine. He was not going to fall for her. “What kind of cook are you?”

The smile froze. “I beg your pardon?”

“Dinner. We’re stuck here till the phone rings, and we have to eat. Do you cook?”

Christina blinked, bewildered by his abrupt change of subject. One minute she’d been having a real conversation, basking in the uncommon intimacy of actually talking with a man in her kitchen, and now he expected her to feed him? She reached for her dignity.

“Not well. I can offer you some eggs and toast if you’re hungry.”

“I’m more hungry than eggs and toast. Do you mind if I see what else you’ve got?”

She stepped back, waving a hand in a gesture she hoped would look royal, and probably came off as royally ticked. “Please. Be my guest. But don’t expect to find anything. I told you, I’m no cook.”

He was already rummaging through cupboards without regard to her privacy or her warning. She stifled a protest.

He flashed a grin over his shoulder. “Yeah, but I am.”

She was still trying to take it in. “You cook.”

“You bet.”

“That’s very…evolved of you.”

“Not really. Cooking is just another way to be self-sufficient. I did a lot of the cooking growing up.”

Trying not to resent his intrusion, she watched him pile things on her counter, her clean, bare counter, like testaments to her sad, bare life: an unopened box of macaroni and cheese, a flat tin of anchovies she used to spice up pizza, two cans of tuna and a small bottle of cocktail olives with a Montebello label. He dug deeper, unearthing her lonely bottle of olive oil and the dried herbs she’d bought to make salad dressing.

“Your mother didn’t cook?” she asked.

“My mom liked to go out. She was the uncrowned benefit queen and committee chair of Highland Park, Texas.” He squatted to dig in a cupboard for a stainless steel pot. “My sister and I got pretty tired of heating things in the microwave, so I taught myself the basics.”

After filling the pot at the sink, he set it on the stove. Christina sipped her water, watching him. He poured olive oil into a skillet and peeled garlic with a no-fuss ease that was impressive. His T-shirt stretched over his biceps. His forearms were muscled. She found herself watching them, and the movement of his hands, and flushed.

“That doesn’t look very basic,” she said.

“I had an XO—executive officer—who liked to cook. I learned a lot from him.”

He scraped slivered garlic into the hot oil. The scent rose and made her mouth water.

“It always seemed a waste of time for me to cook,” she said. “It’s not like I was ever going to be called on to whip up a formal state dinner, and here…most of the time, I eat alone.”

He chopped anchovies with brisk competence. “All the more reason to make sure you eat properly, then. Weren’t you the woman who said learning is never wasted?”

“I guess I did,” she admitted. Whatever he was making smelled too good for her to take offense. But she’d never taken kindly to being told what to do, and she couldn’t resist teasing him a little. “But in this case it would still be superfluous. I have you to take care of me now. At least temporarily.”

He slid her a dark, unreadable look. “I didn’t sign on as your houseboy, princess.”

“No.” She was embarrassed. And it served her right, for trying to flirt with a man like Jack Dalton. “I didn’t mean—I don’t expect you to wait on me.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I—I very much doubt my father wants to hire you because you’re a good cook or can run errands. I may need a bodyguard, but I can live without servants. I prefer to live without servants.”

“So you moved to Montana to get away from it all.”

She hesitated. “Something like that.”

He added salt to the boiling water and then threw in the uncooked noodles from the box of macaroni and cheese. “You said you had wine. White?”

Here, at least, she could demonstrate her expertise. “I have a bottle of 1997 Laspiro Classico.”