Merline Lovelace: Devlin and the Deep Blue Sea

At Devlin’s question, Liz pulled in another breath. She could think of a hundred reasons to refuse his request. She didn’t really know this man, wasn’t sure she believed everything he’d told her.

Yet she couldn’t deny he acted on her like a damn spark plug. Every time he got this close, he transmitted an electrical energy that made her pulse rev faster and her skin get hotter. Still, she was pretty sure she would have denied his request if the rig had remained stable.

Well, It didn’t pitch much. Just enough to send Liz staggering forward a step, smack into Devlin’s denim-covered chest.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, his voice edged with a husky note that had Liz’s toes curling into the deck.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

spent twenty-three years in the Air Force, pulling tours in Vietnam, at the Pentagon and at bases all over the world. When she hung up her uniform, she decided to try her hand at writing. She’s since had more than fifty novels published, with over seven million copies of her work in print. Watch for the next book in the Code Name: Danger series, I’ll Walk Alone, coming from Silhouette Intimate Moments.

For the Old Farts gang—thanks for a fun day of war stories and tall tales about life on the patch!

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

“You sleazy bucket of slime!”

Fury seared Elizabeth Moore’s veins as she glared at the e-mail she’d printed out less than a half hour ago. In the light of the fat, round Baja moon she could just make out the message her fiancé had zinged her.

Correction.

Ex-fiancé.

Fuming, Liz ripped the e-mail into halves, then quarters, then jagged eighths. Waves, tinted to liquid gold by the moon, lapped at her bare ankles. With May slipping fast toward June, the heat of the Mexican night wrapped around her like a spongy blanket.

Digging her toes into the wet sand, Liz tore the eighths into sixteenths and threw them into the sea. A receding wave carried off the scraps. The soggy bits floated for a few seconds before slowly sinking, drowning Liz’s shattered dreams down with them.

“I can’t believe I fell for such a jerk!”

The truth was only now beginning to register. The man she thought she’d share her life with, the fiancé who’d convinced her to take this job in Mexico while he racked up hours flying as a civilian contract pilot in Singapore had just zapped her an e-mail informing her he’d fallen for another woman. A Malay correspondent for NBC news by the name of Bambang Chawdar.

Bambang, for God’s sake!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the bastard had also cleaned out their joint bank account.

Liz couldn’t decide which infuriated her more—the fact that she’d convinced herself she was really in love with Donny Carter or that she’d remained faithful to him during their long separation.

“Seven months,” she ground out. “Seven months I’ve lived like a damned nun.”

She’d certainly had plenty of opportunities for sin. The oil crews she choppered to the offshore rig some forty miles off the Baja peninsula generally consisted of prime specimens. And when they came off their month-long rotations, they were hungry for female companionship. In the past seven months Liz had become an expert at dodging propositions from horny roughnecks and roustabouts. Most had required only a breezy smile or a firm “no, thanks.” One or two had required a little more forceful response.

Liz certainly didn’t feel like smiling now. She felt like hitting something. Or releasing her fury in a way that would soothe her battered pride and her pent-up frustration.

“I swear to God I’m going to jump the next halfway-sober male I meet!”

Her fierce vow carried clearly over the murmur of the Pacific. So did the amused drawl that came out of the darkness behind her.

“I’m sober, darlin’. And if you’re looking for someone to jump, I’d be happy to oblige.”

Liz’s heart leapfrogged into her throat. She spun around, searching the dunes, until a dim shadow materialized. The moon was behind him. She couldn’t make out his features, but the rest of him telegraphed a clear message. With each step he took toward her, a marquee inside her head flashed the words tall, rangy and buff.

What the heck was he doing out here on this isolated stretch of beach so late at night?

What was she doing here, alone and weaponless?

Cursing the anger that had made her leave both her cell phone and her collapsible baton in the Jeep parked up by the road, Liz stood her ground. She’d spent four years as an air force pilot. Her survival, evasion, resistance and escape trainers had taught her some pretty brutal moves. She could take this guy down if she needed to, despite his height and the impressive set of muscles she could just make out under his black T-shirt and jeans.

“I appreciate the offer,” she replied with a lift of her chin, “but you might want to rethink it. The mood I’m in, a midnight tussle in the sand might not be a particularly enjoyable experience for you.”

She saw his head angle, felt the prickly heat of his gaze as it traveled from her face to her stretchy white T-shirt to her cutoffs and the bare legs below. His face was a blur in the darkness, but she couldn’t miss the wolfish grin that appeared as he stepped closer.

“I’ll take my chances.”

The slow drawl pegged him as an American. The laughter lacing it stirred an unexpected response from Liz. For an insane moment she was actually tempted to follow through with her rash vow. God knew she could use a little stud service, and this six-foot-plus hunk of hard muscle certainly looked like he could provide it.

Maybe it was the moon, she thought wildly. It had to be the moon exerting some weird gravitational pull, like the riptides so prevalent along the Baja coast. Whatever is was, Liz felt the surge of something dangerous. Powerful.

Caution shouted at her to step back, put a safe distance between her and this broad-shouldered stranger. Anger, singed pride and an uncharacteristic recklessness kept her in place as he moved closer.

She could see his features more clearly now. With the precision of an aviator verifying her course headings, she cataloged each one. Strong, square chin. Nose with a slightly flattened bridge, as if it had taken a punch or two. White squint lines at the corners of his eyes. A grin that was pure sex.

“How about we…?”

A sharp crack split the night. Another followed a heartbeat later. The stranger spit out a curse, lunged forward, and slammed into Liz. She went down hard and landed on her butt in the shallow surf.

He went down with her, but rolled to his feet a second later and sprinted in the direction of the shots.

“Stay here!”

Like she could move? She was sprawled like a beached porpoise, wheezing from the impact of what had felt like 180 pounds of solid male.

It took Liz several seconds of painful effort to suck air back into her lungs before she, too, was up and running.

In the silent hours before dawn, only the occasional set of headlights stabbed through D.C.’s embassy district. The brick town houses lining a side street just off Massachusetts Avenue were shuttered and dark. From the outside, the elegant, three-story town house halfway down the block appeared as somnolent as its neighbors.