Chapter Five
Most times I scare myself.
Cal’s earlier words drifted through Julia’s mind, leaving her wondering what he’d meant. Even at their worst moment together, he’d never sparked fear in her, only anger. She stifled a small shiver. That was then, this was now.
After they abandoned the car, Cal flagged down a taxi and took her shopping most of the afternoon. She’d tried on nothing, drew no attention to herself, not that it mattered.
From the moment they walked into a store, he’d taken charge. He ignored her suggestions and made his own choices.
Bold, jeweled colors, thin materials, admittedly feminine styles. But all at prices that would put her bank account in arrears for a whole year.
“Still pouting?”
“I don’t pout.” She never had, but if she could, today would’ve been the day. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and looked down her nose. A tactic that served her well in the Oval Office.
Cal laughed. “Could have fooled me.”
He set their shopping bags on the floor and opened the door to a high-rise apartment.
“Stay here.” He grabbed his gun from its holster and disappeared past the doorway.
“Jerk,” she muttered.
“I bloody well heard you,” Cal admonished from somewhere in the apartment.
After sounding the all clear, he appeared at the door. “If you’re going to call me names, at least do it to my face.”
“Why, when I take so much pleasure in doing it behind your back?” Julia snagged the shopping bags, then slipped past him through the doorway.
“What next?” The blast of air-conditioning felt good against her skin. She set the packages on a nearby couch, lifted the hair from the nape of her neck and closed her eyes.
She wore her hair shorter now, styled into a sleek cap of sable that was parted at the side and cut into a blunt slant. It brushed against the smooth line of her jaw, drawing the eye down the delicate line of her neck.
“That depends on you.” The underlying edge had her eyes open, but whatever she thought she heard was gone. He shoved the pistol into its holster behind his back, then slipped off his jacket.
“Are you going to start sharing information with me?” He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt, leaving the strong column of his neck and a bit of his chest visible.
“For instance?” Julia glanced away, ignoring the skip in her pulse, the desire that tickled the back of her throat.
“We can start with the bank accounts that you placed the money in.”
“No.” Her hand fell away, the hair settled once again on her nape. “And before you rip into me, I’m not keeping it from you out of spite, Cal. It’s my insurance. I need to be part of this mission.”
“Since when has this become a mission?” Cal asked wryly. “I consider it a wild goose chase.”
Julia sank onto a matching love seat, then resisted the urge to slip off her leather sandals and fling one at Cal’s head.
Instead, she settled for a small toss under a nearby coffee table and studied her new home.
The apartment reflected the romantic elegance of a century-old Spanish villa. Rustic reds and muted greens threaded the room, enhanced the oversize adobe fireplace and exposed-beam ceiling. Linen drapes of a pale, buttery-yellow billowed gently against the open windows and balcony doors. The scent of the warm Caribbean breeze tugged at the senses, tempting those inside to wander out, she was sure, to the sun-warmed balcony and the ocean view beyond.
“Why didn’t you tell me Jason was your friend?” she asked. “We were together for nearly six months and you never mentioned it.”
“Because Jason and I weren’t friends,” Cal answered. “We weren’t anything.”
“And yet, you owe him.”
“I owe a lot of people many different things, Julia. And some owe me. It’s the nature of my job. You’ve worked in politics, you’ve seen Jon Mercer operate. The man borders on being one of the best con artists of our time.”
He crossed over to a small glass bar beside the balcony doors. “Want something?”
“No, thanks.” She loved Jon like a father, so it was hard for her to be at odds with him now. Even harder to believe the worst of him.
Stubborn Irish, his wife Shantelle called him in private. With his charming ways and wicked words.
Approaching his midsixties, President Mercer defined the term “larger than life” with a set of strong, broad shoulders, an even gait to his walk and, on most occasions, an even temperament. He was quick to laughter, quicker when the joke was on him, but swift and scathing when it came to dispensing his more difficult duties.
Jon Mercer saw only the black and white when it came down to the laws. Of humanity or the land. He compromised out of necessity—for the people who entrusted him with their lives and the well-being of their children. But on a deeper, personal level, there existed no gray areas.
And Julia admitted silently, that was what she feared the most.
Restless, she stood and walked to the window. The sun sank toward the ocean, painting the beach in tangerine hues, shaping the waves until they tossed and turned with the incoming tide.
“You’re like him, you know.” She turned to Cal. Frustration scraped at her nerves, even while its cause evaded her. “I never really understood that until now.”
“Like who?” Cal opened a cabinet underneath the bar and pulled out a bottle of whiskey.
“Jon Mercer.”
Cal’s lips twitched with amusement. “You’d bloody well better be joking, sweetheart. I haven’t aged that much since you’ve last seen me.”
“I’m not talking in physical likeness.”
But in retrospect, she saw that, too. A younger Jon Mercer, an older Calvin West.
His shoulders flexed beneath the white dress shirt just a bit when he poured three fingers of the whiskey into a highball glass. Her eyes followed the lines, the tailored fit of the cotton from the shoulders to his chest to the flat of his stomach.
It hadn’t been that long since she’d touched the warm contours beneath.
“Do you want me to step from behind the bar so you can finish the job?” Cal said softly.
Startled, Julia looked up, her breath hitched in her chest.
He stilled at the sound, letting his gaze catch hers. Something in his eyes sharpened, then turned almost predatory.
She forced herself to breathe.
“How do I remind you of Jon Mercer, Julia?”
Each of his words drifted over her, low and velvet-smooth against her skin. Small electric shocks pricked at the base of her spine even as the warning bells went off in her head.
“For king and country,” she said, cursing the fact her voice broke just a little. “No middle ground. No matter what it takes. Or who it destroys,” she repeated, just managing to keep the hurt from filtering through.
“It sounds a bit heroic, doesn’t it?”
“If it did, that wasn’t my intent,” she retorted. “I was aiming more for calculated and …”
Dangerous.
He stepped from behind the bar, and her gaze dipped to the narrow hips,