Chapter 2
The indoor pool was warm and inviting, lights dim, casting intriguing shadows on the tiled walls. A mosaic of trees with shimmering silver leaves crept up to the ceiling, woven into the pattern of the cool mint tiles. From the doorway, Saber waved to Jess and watched him slide silently into the water, the muscles in his arms bulging with strength. His skin gleamed a deep bronze, dark hair tangling over the heavy muscles of his chest and angling down his ridged abdomen to disappear into blue swimming trunks.
He definitely had a body on him. She stared at him often, although she tried not to, and she knew every defined muscle. When he moved, it was with total grace. He was always alert and ready, yet still when he was at rest, unlike her. She fidgeted, always moving, always wary of standing in one spot.
Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him glide through the water. He reminded her of a sleek, powerful predator, silent, deadly, moving with deceptive laziness as he cut through the water.
Saber couldn’t take her eyes from him, watching the power in him. He’d never told her what had happened to his legs, but the scars were still red and raw and the doctors visited him often. She knew he’d had numerous operations, but it wasn’t something he ever discussed. He worked out and he went to a physical therapist daily. He excelled at swimming. Once, he’d stayed under so long, she’d dived in, terrified he’d drowned, only to have him scare her by grabbing her around the waist and tossing her to the surface. No wonder he’d been a Navy SEAL; he was more at home in the water than out of it.
When Jess halted, using powerful arms to tread water, Saber dropped her towel on the deck and dove in, not wanting him to catch her staring at him.
Jess dove right after her and met her beneath the water. His hands spanned her waist and shot her to the surface. She erupted from the water laughing, came down, eluding his outstretched hands, and dove beneath him. They played an energetic game of tag and football. Saber was the football. They raced, tried a strange form of water ballet, and finally ended up clinging to the bars that ran the full length of the pool.
Breathless, her eyes dancing, Saber wiped droplets of water from her face. “This was a great idea, Jess.”
He hooked one arm around the metal bar and lay lazily floating, buoyed by the water. “I always have great ideas. You should know that by now.” He sounded impossibly arrogant.
She sent a jet of water at his smug, grinning face, squealed, and dove to the center of the pool when he retaliated. By the time she had surfaced he was sitting at the water’s edge striving for innocence.
Her heart jumped just looking at him. His smile. His laughter. The way his eyes lit up. How could she have ever gotten so lucky as to find him? She sent another column of water shooting toward him, then turned and swam away. She spent several minutes doing hard, fast laps, driving herself, trying to push her body into fatigue.
Jess settled into the hot tub and turned on the jets, allowing the water to massage his damaged legs. He sat in silence and watched her small body cut efficiently through the water. Strangely, when she swam, his body always went on alert, every sense flaring into self-preservation mode. She was a beautiful swimmer. She moved with the rhythm of a ballerina, silently and gracefully. He knew she had fast reflexes. He’d even tested them a time or two, simply because of this-the way she swam.
When she allowed herself to forget he was near, she swam fast like a racer, but when he’d asked if she’d ever competed, she’d flicked him a glance of such utter disdain that when one second later she’d laughed and said of course, he knew she was lying to him.
He should have used that-added it to the things he knew about her and continued to search for her true identity. She had a valid driver’s license, but her prints didn’t match the prints in the system. Not even close. He wiped his face with the towel and continued to watch her perfect form. It was mesmerizing to see the way she shot beneath the water as she made the turn, gliding half the distance to the other side before surfacing to stroke. Not a single sound gave her presence away, even as she surfaced, and that was more than fascinating to him. He practically lived in water, and just how could she be so completely silent?
Saber. He played with her name in his mind. A sword-for justice? She’d taken the name, obviously. And where did Wynter fit in? Things just didn’t add up with his roommate, yet he couldn’t bring himself to put his team on it. He sighed as he watched her surface again, looking first at the shimmering leaves on the tiles and then up at the ceiling.
She looked so exotic, yet innocent. She was thin, but there was muscle beneath that smooth skin. She turned her head and found him-and smiled. God. It hit him like a punch in the gut. His body immediately heated, blood rushing, centering in his groin, until he thought he might burst with need. The wariness was ingrained in her-those violet-blue eyes, so unusual, so haunted, were always restless, searching for an enemy.
He knew part of the reason she relaxed with him was because he was in a wheelchair and she didn’t perceive him as a threat. It wasn’t that she didn’t see-or recognize-the predator in him; she simply didn’t believe the threat existed any longer.
“Are you going to swim all night?”
“I’m thinking about it,” she conceded. “It’s this or the hot tub.”
“I feel compelled to point out the hot tub is much warmer and that you’re turning blue. The color looks good on you though, it goes with your eyes.”
She laughed, the way he knew she would. He loved that he could make her laugh-really laugh. Genuine and happy. It had taken months of patience, but she had finally let him in, just a little bit. She trusted him. But maybe she shouldn’t. She had a false impression of who and what he was, but he wasn’t about to scare her off by showing her the real Jess Calhoun. She could believe this life, the radio station, the songwriting. The man who treated her gently.
Saber climbed the ladder, shivered, and hurried to the hot tub, taking a seat opposite him. “I didn’t realize I was so cold.”
That was another thing he’d noticed about Saber-she ignored her comfort level, even pain, as if she could block sensation for long periods of time.
“Where’d you meet Larry?” Because he was going to have a few words with the man. “What’s his last name and where does he work?”
She made a face. “He’s a bartender, and believe me, Jesse, he’s not worth the trouble, so back it on down and forget the whole thing. It was my own fault anyway.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I don’t know why I do half the things I do. Going out with Larry was a bad idea and entirely my fault.”
“Why did you go out with him?”
She looked relaxed, something Saber rarely did. She was in constant motion, like a hummingbird. Her hands were always restless. She skipped or danced across a room rather than walked. Sometimes she’d leap over the furniture-she’d even cleared the couch one day, and it was longer and wider than most. She was a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out.
Saber opened her eyes to look at him through the rising steam.
Because of you. She went out with utterly rotten cads because she didn’t dare fall in love with Jesse. That was so lame-so stupid. She couldn’t have someone decent, so she went out with men knowing she couldn’t hurt them-ever. She would never hurt an innocent.
She didn’t have time to censor her thoughts. Not even to herself had she ever admitted that she couldn’t look at him anymore without wanting him. She wanted to trace every line in his face, memorize the shape and texture of his mouth, slide her fingers through that wealth of beautiful hair that fell haphazardly in all directions. She couldn’t close her eyes and not have him in her mind. She smelled him in every room. When she inhaled, he was there, drawn so deeply into her lungs that she felt possessed by him.