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He freaking knocked her socks off.
He was completely unexpected in the sea of ordinary faces, and he most definitely looked like trouble—one of those seriously dangerous and dangerously addicting men she hadn’t had in a long time.
Erm…you’ve never had that kind of man, Maddy.
Maybe it was high time she did.
He stopped and leaned over to lift a large bag off the conveyor belt, the women in his vicinity staring at him. Then, more men surrounded him…damn…was there some kind of Tall, Dark, and Handsome Conference here?
A mixture of heights, physiques, hair colors from black to dark brown, straight to curly, all with the same caliber of danger. It radiated off them as they joked and smiled amongst themselves. Two of them were impossibly big and muscular, one was bald, the other with a full head of dark hair, although there was plenty of delicious muscle to go around, as biceps popped from short-sleeved shirts and T-shirts, broad shoulders and wide chests, narrowing down to those lean waists.
Someone bumped into her and knocked her out of her hormone-laden gawking. Okay, so estrogen did play a role in her loss of all reality, and the drooling. Did she have a tissue?
Her suitcases mocked her as they rolled by her, and she jumped at getting them off the belt, but there were so many people in her way. She shouldered and elbowed her way through until she came up against an immovable object.
Her fatigue got the best of her, her tone just as crabby as most of the people who had bumped into her. “I’m trying to get my suit—” But then she looked up, words escaping her.
That delicious man was staring down at her. Her mind was so utterly blank, she was lost. She couldn’t remember her own name. One breath passed, then another, and she was still riveted in place, trying, frantically, to reboot her brain.
He leaned down without a word and plucked her escaping smug bags off the belt like they weighed nothing. For the big suitcase, she’d had to pay extra because she’d exceeded the weight.
“Ma’am,” he said as he deposited them at her feet, people now flowing around them like he was some kind of fixture.
One of the other impossibly hot men said, “You’re such a boy scout, Shark.”
He moved past her, and all of them were eventually lost in the crowd. She looked at the women in front of her, and all of them bit their lips and shook their heads. One of them said, “It should be criminal to look like that.”
She had to agree. All of them should be arrested.
She grabbed one bag in each hand and headed for the entrance. Once out into the tropical heat of the early evening air, still more crowds of people looking for transportation, she spied a man with a sign that said US Embassy. She made a beeline for it.
Before she could open her mouth, the man who had helped her with her bags…Shark blocked her way, opened the door, and his seven friends piled in. They were all decked out with Oakleys. Oh, dammit. Special forces guys wore that brand of sunglasses. These guys were beyond fit, and they carried themselves like conquering heroes.
Right. They were the special operators her dad had mentioned. So, this meant they would be milling around the embassy. She’d bet her degrees on it.
He turned and saw her, then smirked. “Sorry, this is the embassy limo. Why don’t you take your shapely ass over to a shuttle. They go to all the upscale hotels, princess.”
With that, he entered the limo and closed the door in her face. The driver then pulled away from the curb and left her in the heat and exhaust.
Yeah, special operators. And one of them thought she had a shapely ass. Hmm, that meant her leg day was working as intended. She giggled to herself.
Okay, so that was that. They had made an honest mistake, but she was looking forward to the looks on their faces when they realized they had just hijacked the ambassador's daughter's cushy, air-conditioned ride. Because it was hotter than Hades out here. She scanned the area and spied a ramshackle cab. She wondered if it would be as exciting an experience as her recent trip to New York City. She hoped so...as long as it had seatbelts.
* * *
Inside the limo, Bale “Shark” Maddox leaned back in the cushy seat, working at getting the russet-haired, well-dressed sex kitten out of his mind. He was here on deployment, not vacation, in a country that he considered primed to blow at any moment. There was a precarious agreement between what amounted to a kid at the seat of government, and the more mature leaders who were not appeased. It’s why the DoD had sent them in the first place. It was a paradise, and on the outside, it looked like the Haitian people were getting their ducks in a row, but Washington wasn’t convinced, and after the tragedy at Benghazi, Libya, and Niamey, Niger where everything looked fine and dandy right up until they murdered United States Ambassadors, his government wanted to be safe rather than sorry.
“Lieutenant?” the driver said through the speaker.
“Yes,” Michael “Tex” Penn, their leader, responded.
“I got my wires crossed, sir,” he said apologetically. “I was supposed to pick up the ambassador’s daughter on this trip. I thought she was coming in later, but I was just informed she landed about half an hour ago.
“Of course,” Tex said, and the limo made a wide sweep, getting back into the traffic that was heading to the airport.
They pulled up to the curb and the driver got out. Shark could see the sex kitten standing there, perspiration forming on her smooth, warm-toned skin, her amber eyes now shaded by sunglasses. She’d overpacked, typical. He had to wonder how much of her belongings included sexy lingerie. It was easy to fantasize what it would look like on her body.
But he beat that back. He wanted a woman of substance. Sex kittens were good at seduction and spending money, nothing more. He couldn’t quite get his eyes off her, and frowned when the driver called out, “Dr. Towson?”
