10 months earlier
Ma’ar ye zhad, Azakistan
TREVOR HID A yawn behind his hand. Despite his best efforts, Ambassador Stanton had persuaded him to attend this gala, a celebration marking the culmination of the week-long Music and Art Foundation’s Ma’ar ye zhad Festival. Dignitaries crowded the Prince Kashif Hashmi Hotel. Trevor found it tedious.
He’d agreed to come for one reason, and she had yet to put in an appearance. The US ambassador to Azakistan, whom he had not fooled one whit with his subtle queries, had assured him that Deputy Political Counselor Shelby Gibson would attend. So far, she had not. Disappointed, he tossed back the rest of his bourbon, grimacing as it burned its way down his throat. Had he stayed long enough to be polite?
He gently disengaged himself from the chic, leggy blonde who’d attached herself to him about ten minutes ago. She leaned against him as she spoke, rubbing against him, and couldn’t have been any more clear if she used semaphore flags. He felt nothing but a vague distaste. Murmuring apologies, he meandered toward the lobby. The blonde followed, sliding her hand around his arm again and walking next to him. He resisted the urge to yank his arm free and bolt from her cloying perfume. “Look . . .” he started to say. “I beg your pardon, but—”
A movement in his periphery had him glancing toward it out of habit, and he halted in his tracks. A vision of loveliness drifted across his path. Shelby Gibson’s appearance stunned him; gone was the severe buttoned-down professional he’d met last week, who’d briefed an advanced Secret Service team on the political climate in Azakistan. This woman dazzled. The red dress she wore had straps that gathered to become a draped semicircle of fabric brushing across the tops of her breasts. The skirt clung to her hips and drifted down to the floor, pooling slightly and making him wonder how she could walk without tripping. As she moved, the thigh-high slit showed provocative flashes of leg. She stopped to chat with Admiral Leighton, turning away from Trevor, and he stopped breathing.
The dress had no back.
A richness of silky, perfect skin led his eyes inevitably downward, past the small of her back, to where more material clung just a little to the cleft in her derrière, but stopped short of revealing the sweet curve.
Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to see those smooth, lovely globes.
The dress tantalized him, but so did her bare arms; the tousled, curly hair brushing the nape of her neck; the slope of her spine. Her sultry laugh. He reached her before he even realized he’d moved. “Good evening, Admiral Leighton. Ms. Gibson.”
She tensed, her gaze bouncing off of him before returning to the admiral. A pink flush rose in her cheeks. “Good evening, Major.”
“Major Carswell,” the admiral said. “I’m so pleased you could join us this evening. You are acquainted with our lovely Shelby, I see. Your timing is perfect. Perhaps you could keep her company while I make the rounds?”
Amusement glittered in the older man’s eyes. Trevor grimaced. Obviously, the admiral had noted Trevor’s laser focus on Shelby.
“I’m quite all right, Admiral. There are a few people I need to chat with as well.” Her gaze focused over Trevor’s shoulder, and he winced as he felt the unwelcome touch of the blonde on his arm. Shelby swallowed a healthy mouthful of champagne. “Hello, Babette.”
So that was her name.
Babette curled her fingers around his bicep. “Shelley. How are you?”
Trevor eased away from her, and she immediately glued herself to his side again. He sent the admiral a helpless look.
“It’s Shelby. Why don’t you three chat, and I’ll get you a plate from the buffet, Admiral.” Shelby tried to withdraw, but stopped when the admiral touched her arm. He moved his hand to her wrist, gently guiding her forward so she could not extricate herself without jerking her arm free.
“I’ve already eaten more than my fair share. Besides, you should enjoy yourself. Instead of talking to me, you should be dancing.” His face lit as though he’d just had a brilliant idea, and he beamed at Shelby and then Trevor. “In fact, the orchestra is lovely. Why don’t you young people dance together?”
Babette slid her hand up Trevor’s arm. “This dance is mine.”
Trevor took hold of her wrist, peeling it off his shoulder. “I believe you are mistaken, madam.”
Shelby allowed Admiral Leighton to take her champagne flute and pull her to Trevor’s side. He wasted no time slipping an arm around Shelby’s waist.
Admiral Leighton turned to Babette, who shot him a dirty look. “Mrs. Jowat, why don’t I escort you to the dining area? I believe I saw your husband there just a few minutes ago.” The admiral placed his hand in the small of Babette’s back, guiding her away. She scowled, but mercifully went.
Trevor remembered Colonel Louis Jowat only too well. He’d patronized Shelby during her briefing to the Secret Service in preparation for President Cooper’s visit to al-Zadr Air Force Base. Had verbally patted her on the head and told her to let the grown-ups talk. Trevor disliked him for that alone. Apparently, his wife found him tiresome as well.
As they made their way through the crowd, Shelby shifted closer to him to avoid bumping into anyone. He enjoyed the brush of her arm against his, the soft bump of her hip.
Hell, who was he kidding? The simple truth was that he burned to hold this woman in his arms.
She stopped just short of the dance floor and turned to him. “We’re out of the admiral’s sight, Major Carswell. Please don’t feel obligated, if you need to be elsewhere.”
Instead of answering, he moved closer. Oh, no. He was getting his dance. Touching her upper arm, much as Admiral Leighton had, he skimmed his fingers down her silky skin to her wrist, curling his fingers around the delicate bones there. He guided her hand to his shoulder, holding his over it for several beats. He snaked his other arm around her waist and tightened his grasp.
“Not at all,” he said, swinging her onto the floor in a fluid move. “The admiral just wants you to have a bit of fun.”
Her face softened with affection. “He’s a sweetheart.”
A foreign sensation lurched in his innards. What would it take for her to look at him that way? “He’s clearly fond of you.”
“We’ve worked together for quite a while now. He’s a brilliant diplomat.”
Trevor had no use for diplomats. In his experience, they mucked things up more often than they solved problems. Admiral Leighton, however, was also a military man, and understood the SpecOps community better than most.
His feet moved of their own accord, obliging her to sway with him, taking the opportunity to ease her closer. His fingers slid across skin like brushed silk, splaying as they reached her lower back. She said something else, but he couldn’t hear it through the roar in his ears.
“I said, perhaps you should have eaten more at dinner. You look hungry.” Her tone was light, amused.
He looked into her face, not trying to hide his desire. Answering attraction flared in hers, causing his pulse to leap.
“I’m starving,” he admitted, voice low. His head spun just from her nearness, clouding his senses. “But not for cocktail shrimp. That dress looks amazing on you. You’re incredibly striking.”
Her face closed down. Somehow, he’d said the wrong thing.
“Beauty is a trick of genetics, nothing more.”
For a moment, he lost himself in her brown eyes, unable to look away. What had she just said? “That’s not the kind of beauty I’m talking about. Yes, you are beautiful. But I’m talking about your confidence, your intelligence, the way you carry yourself and interact with people. You are as lovely as Babette Jowat is, erm, not.”
Her eyes rounded as she stared at him, mouth agape. “You don’t think Babette is beautiful? That would put you in the minority.”
He laughed. “Sharks have their own allure as well. It certainly doesn’t mean I want to swim with one.”
She searched his face. Trying to judge his sincerity, he thought. He took the opportunity to gather her closer. She fit perfectly against him. Just the right height, slender but with curves in all the right places. And her scent intoxicated him. Was it grapefruit? On her it smelled exotic. He fought to focus.
“Most people don’t see that about her.”
“Most people don’t see that about you,” he replied. “Not the shark bit. Seeing beyond your pretty face. Seeing how capable you are.”
She’d stopped moving, so he did as well. Her brows were pulled down. “Usually, I just wear a simple black dress. I’m practically invisible.”
“You never could be. Not to me.”
“It’s better that way, though. More professional. I end up at a lot of these events.” She dropped her gaze.
Trevor opened his mouth to speak, but she lifted her lashes and met his eyes, and he promptly forgot what he’d been about to say.
“The same people I work with attend these functions. I don’t want there to be any confusion,” she elaborated.
They were doing little more than swaying to the music, which was fine by Trevor, as Shelby had nudged closer and the tips of her breasts shifted back and forth across his chest. The last thing he wanted was for her to draw back. His body had taken up an insistent throbbing. Gritting his teeth, he eased his pelvis away so she wouldn’t feel his erection. Unfortunately, that stopped the sweet agony of her subtle brushes against his chest as well.
“And the people you don’t work with?”
Humor lit her eyes. “Has it been awhile, soldier?”
A dull flush stained his cheeks. “I was impressed with the briefing you gave to the Secret Service,” he said doggedly. “You have a solid grasp of Azakistani politics. The shift toward fundamentalism has our Ministry of Defense concerned. When you listed out which members of the Azakistani government were pro-Western, that helped not only the American Secret Service planning President Cooper’s visit, but my government as well.”
A smile tipped the corners of her lips. “I’m glad it was useful. And your take on what sorts of weapons these terrorists are acquiring was useful to me. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms.”
“We approach the same problem from different perspectives.”
She made a wry face. “It became brutally obvious you’ve visited Azakistan far more often than you let on.”
“Perhaps I dissembled a bit,” he said. “Goes with the job, I’m afraid. But you ran a high-power, national-level briefing with confidence and authority. You had the respect of everyone in that room. Me included.”
Shelby wrinkled her nose, as though she’d encountered a bad smell. “Not all. Colonel Jowat is a constant thorn in my side.”
He smiled at her. “He’s a gnat’s ass. He just made himself look foolish.”
“Gnats buzz around being annoying. It fits.” She laughed. “May I ask you a personal question? You seem so dedicated to your job. Very much the take-charge type. Do you have a life outside the military?”
No. He’d never wanted one. He enjoyed his dalliances, but the women he slept with didn’t want a relationship any more than he did. Lately, though, he thought maybe there might be more to life than soldiering. Shelby presented a complicated, fascinating puzzle, and he found he wanted very much to know her better.
“Maybe now’s the time to start having one. Maybe I’d like to give up control for once.” He threw her his jauntiest grin. “Come on, then. Take charge. What would you have of me?” He’d meant to sound flippant, but his voice came out low and hoarse. “Command me.”
She shivered against him. Her head turned so that her nose brushed the collar of his military jacket. He felt her soft exhale burn across his skin. “That’s a lot of power for one woman to have.”
The music started again, the rich, lilting strains of a Strauss waltz. He forced himself to swing into the long lines of the dance, startled and delighted when Shelby matched him step for step. “You must attend a lot of these,” he said, “to have learned the Viennese waltz.”
Her eyes sparked amusement. “Classes. The Kettering Center for Dance, when I lived in D.C.”
Trevor firmed his hold on the small of her back as he drifted them out of the way of another couple. He found himself grinning foolishly down at her. “Just a fascination, or were you preparing to dance with me tonight?” he said, keeping his tone light and teasing. To his shock, her face shuttered, though her body still moved sinuously with his. “What did I say?”
Shelby shook her head. “Nothing. My fiancé wanted me to learn the waltz for one of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinners.”
“Fiancé? You’re engaged?” Trevor nearly stumbled over his feet during a turn, barely correcting and almost losing his grip on Shelby. After a moment, his brain unfroze. Stupid man, to leave a woman like Shelby unescorted. “Where is he tonight?”
“In hell, I hope.” She sounded tired, and a little defeated. “Ex-fiancé.”
Trevor exhaled with more relief than he liked to admit. The waltz ended, and he turned her into a careful dip. She arched back, neck elongated, all grace and allure. As he righted her, he pressed her entire length against his and inclined his head until their mouths were a whisper apart. Locking eyes with her, he said, “Clearly, he did not deserve you.”
Her gaze swam with remembered hurt and pain. She dropped her hands and he released her, questions hard in his head. Before he could say anything more, she took a step back. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve had your dance, Major. I’m sure you have more important things to do, and so do I.”