Heartbreak Hero

Where’n all hell was McKay?

He began circling the crush, his impatience as obscure as theirs was obvious while the driver dumped piece after piece from the baggage compartment into a heap on the sidewalk. Gucci took its chances with cheap blue-and-pink-striped plastic as the owners pulled their bags from the bottom of the pile.

Lazy movements at the far side of the crowd snagged his glance and zapped him again. Pushing his sunglasses back to improve the view, he gazed at the growing distance between the black crop top and matching hipster pants, separated by lush skin.

Isolated by her unhurried attitude, she reminded him of a cat, easing out its kinks as all hell let loose around it. “Eyes left, Jellic, you’re working.”

As he scolded himself, a piece of crimson, hard-bodied Samsonite, defaced by a Chinese good-luck symbol and propelled by the removal of the one below it, slid from the top of the heap onto his side of the crowd. Kel took off his shades to read the gold words glinting on its side: Blue Grasshopper, Chinatown, San Francisco.

“Now, that’s what I call carrying promotion to the nth degree.” It didn’t prevent the back of his neck pricking as he moved in for a closer inspection. San Francisco?

McKay couldn’t be that dumb, surely, or that cheap. Could he?

The urge to take a gander at the address tag was blocked by a red floral shirt he recognized. The meaty fingers he’d seen lighting a cigarette captured the handle and pulled it away from the rest. He heard the slap of it against the guy’s bare calves as he hopped off the sidewalk toward the back of the bus, swiping the sweat off his brow through his hair as if the exertion was killing him.

“Hey! That’s mine.” The owner was feminine, unmistakably American and anything but happy.

Simultaneously, but not in order of importance, Kel watched Ms. Bronze-skin whip off her sunglasses. Her shocked gaze, bluer than a Tahitian lagoon, followed the red shirt, while her pink sunglasses tumbled from her hand, catching the light.

As their glances clashed, his body tensed, gearing itself to spring after the thief, then he remembered who he was and why he was there. Although he hadn’t moved an inch, Kel felt as if he’d hit a brick wall. A sensation every bit as painful as her swift expression of disappointment, coursed through him.

As the woman hotfooted it round her side of the vehicle, pride overcame caution. Dropping his suit carrier, he chased the good-luck-charm that wasn’t living up to its publicity.

She was fast but in trouble now; the guy outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds. Kel heard her yell as she ran, “Drop the case, you jerk, it’s mine.”

Kel was at least four paces behind them when she confronted the guy, taking up a fighting stance, hands karate style like miniature lethal weapons, as if anything that small could hurt.

He had to do something quick before she copped a lesson no amount of stretching would get rid of.

The thief yelped, dropping the case as though it burned before the woman had to follow through with her threat. Two fast paces later Kel grabbed the red collar and felt it rip in his hand as the chunky guy twisted out of his grasp, leaving his ill-gotten gains behind. Then, before Kel could grasp him again, he shambled off at a fast clip without looking back.

Kel could easily have overtaken him—hell, he ran like a red sofa on speed—but GDE business came first, no matter how beautiful the victim. His first reaction had been correct.

She was trouble.

As the woman straightened, he checked her over with his eyes and tossed what was left of the shirt collar away with a grin. “That’s the problem these days, nothing’s made to last. You all right?”

“I’d have managed.” Her features were tight, the fabulous blue eyes shuttered. The words “Without you” hung in the air like a film title on a theater marquee. He realized she’d seen him hit that wall. How was she to know that just this once he hadn’t let duty win. A first for him. Though, instead of squandering the occasion on her, he wished he’d spent it on Gordie.

“You want to watch it, lady. Acting as if you’re in some kung fu TV show could get you more than you bargained for. Someone might take you up on it, and then where would you be?”

He reached for the case, flicking the name tag over to read. She was too quick for him. No surprise, considering he was working under two handicaps—the lush, arousing scent of her body and the way her breasts fell forward, cupped by the knit of her crop top.

One thing for sure, she wasn’t wearing a bra.

She caught him looking.

Well hell, he was only human.

“Thanks, I’ll remember that,” she replied, voice cool as the drink he’d fancied earlier, especially with the ice in her eyes to chill it.

She curled her fingers round the handle, pulling it closer.

“Let me get that for you.”

“No problem, it has wheels.” She flicked a catch on the curve of the red monstrosity and conjured up a handle. The laptop case still in his hand was written off by a raised brow that made him feel roughly the same size. “Shouldn’t you be saving your own luggage before it disappears?”

He recognized a dismissal when he heard it. His carrier still where he’d abandoned it, he picked it up and realized she must have been watching him, as well. At least he’d been savvy enough not to damage the laptop. Gorgeous she may be, but he’d long ago given up abandoning his gear in a lost cause, or given the IT engineers who’d invented its programs cause for complaint.

That given, why did that look she’d shot him earlier still rankle? For sure, he wouldn’t disappoint her in the sack, but what man wanted to be needed just for the sex?

He joined the tail-end passengers, all too caught up in their own affairs to react to the contretemps. But on his way to the terminal, he noticed her shades in the gutter and picked them up. He wouldn’t mind another close-up of those cool blue eyes.

A vision startled him with its clarity. A hank of black hair twisting round one hand, to pull her closer, the other sliding under her crop top, bringing an end to another ice age.

Hell, a guy could dream, couldn’t he? That and no more.

Time to scrape the bottom of the barrel and see what floated to the surface.

Waiting at the boarding gate, the thought of how close she’d come to losing the package in her care bathed Ngaire in cold sweat. It was worth a fortune. The fear of not living up to the trust placed in her yawned at the back of her mind like a bottomless pit waiting for her to trip. By now it had been checked in and was secreted in the plane’s hold, safe while no one suspected its nature. The attempted theft today had to be a coincidence. She’d told no one but Leena of her plans. And her best friend would never let her down, not even for the million dollars Paul Savage had brandished under Ngaire’s nose. Savage thought her a fool for turning it down. Like a spoiled child he couldn’t imagine not getting his own way, yet Savage was as every bit an outlaw as the ones who once held up coaches saying, “Your money or your life.”

She’d chosen life. The money didn’t come into it.

Taking a long, cooling drink of orange juice, she scanned the passengers for the guy in the black-and-white shirt but couldn’t see him. So, why bother?

“Yeah, yeah,” she chided herself, knowing his features had made her heart jolt at first glance. One of those things you read about but never in a million years expected to happen.

Disillusionment had come hard on the heels of the first thrill spiking low in her belly. He was no different from all the rest.

Sure, she could take care of herself. She was a hapkido master, for heaven’s sake. No fragile rosebud ready for picking.

Then again, she yearned for just one man to treat her like that bud, even after discovering her talent. Was that why she hadn’t set him right when he’d patronized her attempt to regain her luggage? Annoying, yes, but she couldn’t have it both ways.

Even as he’d been telling her off, “You want to watch it, lady,” the timbre of his voice had made her shiver with desire. You mean lust, don’tcha? She’d been careful not to let it show and now she was kicking herself for pouting like a spoiled brat.

For real, the thief hadn’t been quite so certain her stance was all show and no substance. She’d caught a flicker of fear in his eyes as she faced up to him. Her rescuer had been the mugger’s last straw, sending his fat, sturdy legs into a Road-runner windmill.

The guy who’d made her heart leap from her breast would be in no doubt of her abilities by now, if she’d had to carry through and taken the bozo out. Shooting herself in the foot again by losing any chance of seeing a look in his eye that said she was special. Not superwoman special. Just the ordinary, everyday meeting of minds, attraction, desire and falling in love.

Foolish, when she’d never see him again. But for a moment, she’d looked, and wanted something more than the same old, same old. Her relationships all took a predictable cycle.

Me man, you wo…man.

Then bring out the role confusion. Me man, you…?

She was five-four and could down a two-hundred-and-fifty pound man with a flick of her wrist. What did she need a man for?

Ngaire had never yet come out with “Duh? Sex, dummy!” But she’d wanted to.

Surely there was one man in the world she couldn’t intimidate?

What she needed was someone with X-ray vision. Someone who could see through her soft black cotton do bock uniform pants and tunic to the flesh-and-blood woman underneath.

She remembered when their eyes met, how the crush scrambling to find their gear had melted away. For a brief moment there had been only her, only him.

Then she’d caught his fight-or-flight reaction. Ngaire knew the sensation well, adrenaline pumping hard, flowing out to the nerve endings and the body’s response. She never felt so alive as when she was afraid of death. And these days that was every time she let her mind wander.

He’d hesitated, sending her gratification on a steep downward slide weighed by chagrin.

So, she’d been wrong before and she’d be wrong again. No sense in putting herself through the wringer for a guy she’d exchanged less than a dozen words with. She’d never see him again.

“Mind if I sit here?”

Scratch the last statement.

He was here, and he wanted to sit at her table.

His eyes narrowed and the words, dark and dangerous took on new meaning. Ngaire’s heart began practicing rolls and break falls, beating its little self up against the barrier of her sternum. Stay cool. Remember, he hadn’t survived the cut in the macho stakes. She looked around, counted four empty tables. “No worries, help yourself.”

She’d known he was tall, but until he sat opposite she hadn’t had the pleasure of assessing the width of his shoulders. They made his chair look as if it came out of a kindergarten classroom. She could tell that every last bit of him, narrow waist and hips, broad chest, were in perfect proportion. And that was only the bits she could see. Maybe she should stop staring at him as if she’d escaped from someplace surrounded by high walls and barbed wire.

He’d bought a beer. The hands carrying it were large, palms wide, fingers long, blunt-tipped and workmanlike as he set down a dewy bottle already dripping rings onto the table. “Glad to see you’re none the worse for your adventure.”

“It was nothing, thanks to you. And there’s nothing to get over. I’ve had worse experiences.” Memory plucked a knife out of the past and laced it with pain.

Now, what had made her say that? On average, it took longer to refer to the most horrific incident in her life. Right about the time she got over worrying about taking her clothes off and showing her scars.

She shrugged it off with a quick piece of trivia. “Did you know that, worldwide, the odds of getting mugged are 260,463 to one?”

“I guess I do now.”

He grinned at her, making his dark, almost black eyes crinkle at the corners. He was the first honest-to-God guy she’d met with a Kirk Douglas dimple in his chin. Maybe that was why his mouth had a little curl to the lip that reminded her of someone.

Someone else. Hazy, dreamlike, the notion tugged at her mind though she couldn’t put a name to him.

“Of course the odds increase depending on where you live.”

“Bet you never thought you’d become a statistic in a little place like Tahiti.” He lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank.

It was unrealistic to envy an inanimate object. The bottle had no way of knowing how lucky it was. “Guess I’m now a three-time loser.”

His drink halted midway to the table. “I don’t know about the other two, but you didn’t lose this round. Better to say third time’s the charm.”

Charm? Dare she give any credence to that stupid good-luck sign on her case working? She felt like a dweeb carting it around, but it had been a condition of her trip. As if anyone in the South Seas would be interested in the whereabouts of the Blue Grasshopper? So they’d taken a ratty old building and done it up into a variety of bars, restaurants and nightclubs. That was only a smattering of the attractions in Chinatown.

When she didn’t answer, he said, “Jeez, I hope you don’t think I was minimizing your ability to look after yourself.”

His dark eyes glinted above high slashed cheekbones as he pushed a curl of thick dark hair from his forehead. Sheesh, he was disarming. Something about this man called to her, no matter that there wasn’t a hope in hell of this meeting leading to anything more.

“It’s just that I’m not very big, right?” she murmured, her voice as low as she’d learned to set her expectations.

They perked up at his “From where I’m sitting you look just about perfect. A real live doll.”

His top lip lifted in a half smile. The guy was hitting on her, she could tell. Pity the line wasn’t new, but it did make her smile. Men had to have a secret phone number that dished those lines out, so many a dollar.

The trouble with hope, it kept floating to the surface. “I have taken self-defense lessons for women.”

Taken them, taught them, what was the difference?

“What kind? Judo or karate?”

“Neither. Hapkido…” She took a slug of orange juice, anything to stop from talking. If she didn’t fill her mouth, her life story would come spilling out. Keep telling yourself that those muscles are more poster boy than superhero.

“That deserves kudos. Women should know how to defend themselves.” He stretched across to take her hand. “We didn’t exchange names. Mine’s Kel.”

Good grief, she was going to have to touch him. She put down her glass, wiped a palm that had gone sweaty on her pants, until she could no longer leave his hand floating in midair without looking as dweebish as her luggage.

No good pretending her hesitation had anything to do with knowing the average amount of germs on the human hand. It was the thought of ending up as a wet puddle melting all over his shoes.

Too late, she laid her hand in his. Held it a moment too long as the shock sent the blood rushing from her extremities to vital organs like her heart, which was pounding fit to burst. “Ngaire, I’m called Ngaire,” she repeated like an idiot with a few brain cells short of a mind.

“Now, I guess that’s spelled N-y-r-e-e?”

“No, N-g-a-i-r-e.”

“That’s Maori, isn’t it? I thought you were an American.”

He leaned closer, interested, maybe too interested. And, with the response he’d wrung out of her gone-haywire body, dangerous. Before she knew it she’d be spilling her guts about the package she had to deliver. Too dangerous.

She shrugged, dropping her gaze to hide the lie. “I guess my mother read it in a book.” A book with her grandmother’s name in the flyleaf.

She decided to turn the tables, ask questions and let him do the talking while she got ready to leave. “Are you a native of New Zealand?”

“Yes, but it’s been a long time since I was home.” Kel put the bottle back to his lips and took a long swallow.

The movement in his throat, the earthy slide of his Adam’s apple while he downed the rest of his beer in one, hypnotized her. Keep away from there, girl, she scolded herself. This isn’t a pleasure trip you’re on. It’s more important than sex. A life depended on it.

Her own.

Leaving her unfinished juice on the table, she stood. “I need to freshen up. You have a nice visit back home. Bye, now.”

He stood. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“I doubt it. We’re just two planes who had a near miss, never to waggle wings again.”

“Take care, now.” He held out his hand. It hurt to ignore it, but the cost of touching him was way too high.

“Don’t worry, I will.” She’d take care not to run into him again before her plane left. Ngaire glanced around, her eyes seeking the nearest rest room and safety. It was one thing to shake a man off physically, emotionally it was a whole other ball game. She didn’t need anyone taking her mind off her goal. That track led to trouble.

Kel’s time was running out. A pleasure though it had been talking to Ngaire as he gave the other passengers the once-over, his target needed identifying before he got onboard that plane. Not that her back view wasn’t as easy on the eye as the front as she strode away with her small navy day pack swaying above her hips.

Ngaire’s unwitting remark about near misses reduced his sex life to a metaphor. Brief encounters were his specialty, a quick fumble beneath the covers, a halfhearted satiating of the soul, then back to work. That’s how he liked it, with nothing to come between him and his career—no wife, no family, not even a relationship. Not anymore.

Yeah, he had no regrets about watching her walk away. Not that she would be alone for long. Something about her set men’s mouths drooling. Even the guy on the phone broke off his conversation, holding the receiver at chest level as he watched her go by.

“Thank you, Ngaire,” Kel muttered as an idea struck him that put a wide cat-that-got-the-pigeon grin on his face. She’d given him the perfect solution simply by walking out on him.

He didn’t feel so bad now about the distraction. One look at her braid swinging behind her chair, like a come-hither signal, and he’d been lost, driven to speak to her.

Having rescued her sunglasses from the gutter seemed the perfect excuse, but the second he got within sniffing distance of her honeyed scent, all had been forgotten.

It was her eyes, he thought, as he opened his cell phone. Those blue irises, with their unusual tinge of green, were out of kilter with her skin and hair coloring. The long lashes framing them made them look as if a coal miner had set them in her face. He knew she was American, she’d told him so, but there was something exotic, different, to the cast of her features, as if they’d been culled from different parts of the world and put together to make her look like a houri, all temptation and forbidden delights.

But enough speculating. She had it right, they’d never meet again. Unless they were on the same flight. Nah, the gods couldn’t be that kind, or that cruel.

Kel punched the Faa’a airport’s number into the high-tech pad of the cell phone and asked for the information desk. Once the clerk came on line he fixed his problem by asking her to page Mr. Two Feathers McKay, traveling on flight ATN 104.

Simple.

The best plans always were. All he had to do now was wait and see which man in the passenger lounge answered the call.

The announcement filled the terminal for the third time, and still no one had moved. The best laid plans, et cetera…

He began sweating on it.

From the corner of his eye he caught sight of Ngaire, pack in hand, her braid like a pendulum counting the seconds as she headed straight for the nearest hospitality phone. In no time at all, Kel heard her incredulous, “Hello. You wanted me?”

Kel hung up.

Yeah, he’d wanted her, but not anymore. Now he knew what the initial N. stood for. Ngaire.

Ngaire Two Feathers McKay.

He’d aced her features: Maori, Native American and Scottish, an eclectic mix and a damn beautiful one. She reminded him of a pup he’d had as a kid. Bitzer, he’d called it. Cute as all hell. But the moment his back was turned, it would creep up and sink its little, sharp teeth into the back of his heel.

So, Ngaire had rung his bell and he hated her for it. Hated being wrong about her. But she was wrong, too.

She would be seeing him again.

Chapter 2

Ngaire couldn’t believe she was here in the flesh instead of her imagination. As the plane circled before landing she’d had her nose glued to the window, would have been halfway through the thing if she’d been able to open it.

Paradise, her grandfather had called it as he’d told her stories of his time here as a GI during World War Two. From on high it had all looked so beautiful, the sea blue, the lakes silver, the snow-capped peaks like models from some school project. This was where George Two Feathers had met her grandmother, this land of myth and legend. Like the ones he’d read her from books her grandmother had brought to America. They’d been her fairy tales, and the one that leapt to mind was the Maori god Maui, and fishing up the North Island using a whale’s jawbone as a hook. Ngaire did a mental eye roll as she headed for the escalator down to immigration, grinning wide enough to make her jaw ache.

“Kia ora.”

Ngaire handed her passport to the immigration officer, wishing she could return her greeting without making a mishmash of the language. “Hi.”

Her passport was stamped New Zealand and passed back to her with “Enjoy your stay.”

“Thanks, I will.”

Less than fifteen minutes later Ngaire’s case went through the X-ray machine. She caught the operator’s frown as his chair swiveled away from the monitor, pointing something out to the customs officer towering over the end of the conveyer belt.

“Is there a problem?” Pretending she hadn’t a notion what might have caught his attention, she smiled, blanking out the urge to wipe her palms.

“Did you pack this case yourself?” He looked down his long nose at her, grim as an Easter Island statue.

“Yes, before I left Moorea this morning.” She wasn’t fluffy enough to play it sweet; more brown sugar than candy floss, she stuck to being pleasant, just a woman enjoying a holiday in the South Pacific.

“Open it for me, please?”

It was stupid, but her first reaction was relief that she’d packed all her undies in the pocket. Darn stupid, to worry more about watching his hands slide through her silk thongs than what she knew he would find.

Her glance spun around the Customs hall as fast as her fingertips twirled the numbers of the lock. Pleased to find Kel wasn’t there to witness her humiliation, when she’d done dialing in the codes she turned the clasps toward the customs officer, leaving him to open the case.

As he worked, her mind listed every souvenir she’d bought, dismissing them all as trash alongside what she carried.

There could be only one thing he was after.

As her eyes lifted she caught the inquisitive stare of the elegant French woman she’d been seated beside during the flight and felt herself color. She’d envied the other woman’s cool panache on the plane, knowing she’d never achieve its like in a million years. Such things were bred in the bone, and each of her hodgepodge of ancestors was still fighting for top billing, unable to decide if she was Native American, Maori or Scots.

Her ears picked out the rustle of bubble wrap, drawing her gaze to the officer’s hands. He’d gotten down to the layer where she’d packed her black do bok. She didn’t know why she’d brought it except for the security it represented. Heart jumping to her throat, she watched him untie the black belt with its gold insignia proclaiming her status as a hapkido master.