Suzanne Brockmann - Tall, Dark and Deadly - Get Lucky

No response.

“O’Donlon.”

He didn’t even twitch. His eyes remained shut, his lashes about a mile long, thick and dark against his perfect, tanned cheeks.

No way was she going to touch him. She’d read far too many books where professional soldiers nearly killed the hapless fool who tried to shake them awake.

She clapped her hands, and still he slept on. “Damn it, Luke, wake up.”

Nothing. Not that she blamed him. She was exhausted, too.

All right. She wasn’t going to touch him, but she was going to poke him from a safe distance. She took the copy of Psychology Today that was on the end table, rolled it up and, trying to stay as far back from him as possible, jabbed him in the ribs.

It happened so fast, she wasn’t completely sure she even saw him move. One moment, his eyes were closed, the next he had her pinned to the waiting-room floor, one hand holding both of her wrists above her head, his other forearm heavy against her throat.

The eyes that gazed into hers were those of an animal—soulless and fierce. The face those eyes belonged to was hard and severe and completely deadly, his mouth a taut line, his teeth slightly bared.

But then he blinked and turned back into Luke O’Donlon, aka Lucky, aka her own living Navy Ken.

“Jeez.” He lifted his arm from her throat so that she could breathe again. “What the hell were you trying to do?”

“Not this,” Syd said, clearing her throat, her head starting to throb from where it had made hard contact with the floor. “In fact, I was trying to do the exact opposite of this. But I couldn’t wake you up.”

“Oh, man, I must’ve…” He shook his head, still groggy. “Usually I can take a combat nap and wake up at the least little noise.”

“Not this time.”

“Sometimes, if I’m really tired, and if I know I’m in a safe place, my body takes over and I go into a deep sleep and—” his eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re supposed to be hypnotized,” he remembered. “How come you’re not hypnotized?”

As Syd stared up into the perfect blueness of his eyes, she wasn’t sure she wasn’t hypnotized. Why else would she just lie here on the floor with the full weight of his body pressing down on top of her without protesting even a little?

Maybe she’d gotten a concussion.

Maybe that was what had rendered her so completely stupid.

But maybe not. Her head hurt, but not that much. Maybe her stupidity was from more natural causes.

“Dark, old-model sedan,” she told him. “Lana didn’t want to wake you, and it’s just as well. I’m an idiot when it comes to cars. That and calling it ugly was the best I could do.”

Was he never going to get off her ever again? She could feel the muscular tautness of his thigh pressed between her legs. She could feel…Oh, God.

“Are you okay?” he asked, rolling away from her. “Last time you were hypnotized it was something of an emotional roller coaster. I’m sorry I fell asleep. I really wanted to be there, in case…” He laughed sheepishly, giving her what she thought of as his best Harrison Ford self-deprecating smile. It was as charming on Luke as it was on Harrison. “Well, this sounds really presumptuous, but I wanted to be there in case you needed me.”

She would have found his words impossibly sweet—if she were the type to be swayed by sweet words. And she would’ve missed the warmth of his body if she were the type to long for strong arms to hold her. And if she were the type to wish he’d pull her close again and kiss her and kiss her and kiss her…

But she wasn’t. She wasn’t .

Having a man around was nice, but not a necessity.

Besides, she never took matters of the heart and all of their physical, sexual trappings lightly. Sex was a serious thing, and Luke, with his completely unplastic, extremely warm body, didn’t do serious. He’d told her that himself.

“I was okay,” she said, desperately trying to bring them back to a familiar place she could handle—that irreverent place of friendly insults and challenges, “until you hit me with a World Wrestling Federation-quality body slam, Earthquake McGoon.”

“Ho,” he said, almost as if he were relieved to be done with the dangerously sweet words and their accompanying illusion of intimacy himself, as if he were as eager to follow her back to the outlined safety of their completely platonic friendship. “You’re a fine one to complain, genius, considering you woke me up by sticking a gun barrel into my ribs.”

“A gun barrel!” She laughed her disbelief. “Get real!”

“What the hell was that, anyway?”

Syd picked up the magazine and tightly rolled it, showing him.

“It felt like a gun barrel.” He pulled himself to his feet and held out his hand to help Syd up. “Next time you want to wake me, and calling my name won’t do it,” he said, “think Sleeping Beauty. A kiss’ll do the trick every time.”

Yeah, right. Like she’d ever try to kiss Luke O’Donlon awake. He’d probably grab her and throw her down and…

And kiss her until the room spun, until she surrendered her clothes, her pride, her identity, her very soul. And probably her heart, as well.

“Maybe we shouldn’t leave,” she said tartly, as she followed Luke out the door. “It seems to me that the safest place for a Navy SEAL who fantasizes that he’s Sleeping Beauty is right here, in a psychologist’s waiting room.”

“Ha,” Luke said, “ha.”

“WHAT’S ON THE SCHEDULE for this afternoon?” Syd asked as Luke pulled his truck into the parking lot by the administration building.

“I’m going to start hanging out in bars,” Luke told her. “The seedier the better.”

She turned to look at him. “Well, that’s productive. Drinking yourself into oblivion while the rest of us sweat away in the office?”

He turned off the engine but didn’t move to get out of the truck. “You know as well as I do that I have no intention of partying.”

“You think you’ll single-handedly find this guy by going to bar after bar?” she asked. “You don’t even know what he looks like.”

He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “Syd, I’ve got to do something before he hurts someone else.”

“His pattern is four to seven days between attacks.”

Luke snorted. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” He swore, hitting the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “I feel like I’m sitting on a time bomb. What if this guy goes after Veronica Catalanotto next? She’s home all alone, with only a toddler in her house. Melody Jones is out of town with her baby, thank God.” He ticked them off on his fingers—the wives of his teammates in Alpha Squad. “Nell Hawken lives over in San Diego. She’s safe—at least until this bastard decides to widen his target area. PJ Becker works for FInCOM. Both she and Lucy are best qualified to deal with this. They’re both tough but, hell, no one’s invincible. And there’s you.”

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