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I mean, who could blame him? Justlookat her! He had been wildly attracted just seeing her in a couple of snapshots but in person … whoa. Walking into the coffee house he’d lost situational awareness there for a minute. If he’d been on active duty that would have been fucking dangerous, but luckily he wasn’t in a dusty street in a dusty hamlet in a Stan, he was on the Bay in downtown San Francisco. But still, Raul never lost situational awareness. And yet when he’d seen Emma Holland, everyone else in the big room disappeared. The upscale patrons, the soft jazz playing in the background, the clinking of silverware on plates, the murmur of conversation – gone.
There was only her. Absolutely glowing, a magnet for the eyes. And the colors -- bright red hair, like flames. Turquoise-blue eyes. Creamy pale skin. Not that awful deathly skim-milk color Raul hated but creamy with a rosy undertone. Small and slender and curvy. He’d never seen anyone like her. He had to stop himself from leaning nearer to her, something he really wanted to do. If he got closer he’d get a better sniff of that warm flowery scent filling the air. He wanted to just stick his nose against her neck and sniff like a dog. And while he was at it, he wanted to touch her neck, slender and delicate. Run his hand along it, over the shoulders, down to her breast. It looked small and plump, it looked like it would fit perfectly in the palm of his hand, her nipple right in the center of his palm …
Fuck. Just what he needed in the middle of a fancy coffee shop, talking to a woman he was here to protect. A semi woodie.
Fuck. He was aroused and she was looking at him oddly. Lucky his skin was dark so she couldn’t see the red flush of arousal because right now, he was more excited just talking to Emma than he’d been fucking his last date. Whose name he couldn’t remember.
He breathed himself down. This was serious shit, and he needed to be at the top of his game. She might or might not be in danger but in his experience, where there was a lot of money, there were dangerous people. Plus, this was a very smart woman and dangerous people didn’t like smart people. Smart people saw right through greed and bullshit.
Raul had no idea what was going on. Money wasn’t in his wheelhouse, but bad peoplewereand there was a real possibility of bad people targeting this beautiful woman, whose only crime was being too bright.
Raul had had a decade-long exposure to the bad shit bad people could do. He had images that would stay with him the rest of his life, of torn limbs, shredded flesh and lakes of blood. No matter how attracted he was, his first imperative was keeping her safe from the bad guys and he needed to start doing thatnow. He needed for his dick to stand down.
And it did.
He leaned forward. “Tell me more about Toby.”
That lost expression she’d had while he’d been basically talking to his dick disappeared. He wanted data from her and she lived data.
Emma met his gaze and he was swept away by the beauty of those bright blue eyes and by the blazing intelligence in them.
“Toby. Okay. He’s young. Most quants are, it’s the nature of the game. I’m at the upper end of it and someday will age out of it. The job is intense and no matter how much you love the challenge, the job tends to get you down after a number of years. Which is why I wasn’t surprised that Toby left, I was just surprised that he hadn’t said goodbye. And surprised that he hadn’t told me he was job hunting. It’s the kind of thing we’d have talked about. For him to just disappear …” Pretty dark red eyebrows drew together. “It’s not like him at all.”
“Give me the stats,” Raul said.
Goddamn. He couldn’t look at her for too long without getting lost in those eyes. So, he broke eye contact frequently to look away. He tried to make it look deliberate so she’d take it as him checking their environment.
And then he realized heshouldbe checking the environment. He took the big, airy room in quadrants. One quarter, blink to black, another quarter … it didn’t take long. There were no discernable sources of danger, unless it was to your liver or your arteries.
She nodded. “Toby Jackson. Twenty-six. Originally from Iowa. Blasted through high school, graduated at fifteen. Undergraduate degree from MIT, full scholarship. Masters and doctorate from Stanford. His dissertation on Topology of Dynamic Data is used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to study ocean currents and they offered him a job right out of school.”
“He didn’t take it?”
“No. Absolutely not. They wanted him at Silver Spring, at headquarters. Dullsville. Toby’s very smart, but he is more than just brains. He’s lively, social. Likes the good life. Likes having good money to go out to fancy restaurants, to buy nice clothes. He had one of those harsh religious upbringings that stifled him and he is estranged from his family. Which is why I didn’t try contacting them, they wouldn’t know where he is and –” She swallowed. “From what I understand, they wouldn’t care.”
“That’s hard.” Raul himself didn’t understand family estrangement. He had a huge family and when they had fights, they got down to it, shouted at each other, and then made up. He couldn’t even imagine not talking to his parents.
“Yeah. I think it was hard. At any rate, he wanted bright lights, big city and after Stanford, he wanted to work in San Francisco. With his credentials, he found work immediately. Toby often said he felt like he started his life here. He made a lot of friends. Including me.” Her eyes turned shiny. She sniffed. “Sorry. I didn’t realize how much I miss him until now.”
“A lot,” Raul said.
“A lot,” she agreed.
He didn’t have the heart to tell her he suspected her friend might be gone. This Toby might have severed his ties with her abruptly, out of fear. But he also might be lying at the bottom of the Bay.
Either way, she was hurting.
Raul couldn’t help it. He put his hand over hers and squeezed gently. The human gesture of someone expressing sympathy.I’m here for you.Raul had done it hundreds of times. This time was different. Her hand felt like warm silk and gave him a mild electric shock he felt all along his arm.
Fuck.
She felt it too. Those china-doll blue eyes widened.
He squeezed again and withdrew his hand, sliding it away. Damn, she felt so good. And the sight of his dark hand on her pretty pale one …
Raul sat back. However attracted he was, there was a problem here that felt serious and he had to have a better understanding of it. Because the world wasn’t always kind to beautiful women, especially the smart ones.
“So, the two of you had a good relationship?”
