“Okay. So what was so urgent about strawberries that day?”
She touched his chiseled jawline. He’d shaved this morning and was back to being the clean-cut Navy man she’d wanted to coat with strawberry ice cream and lick all over, but she was such a dork, worries that he might have an anaphylactic reaction had throttled the fantasy.
She ran her thumb along his chin and looked him straight in the eye as she said, “I have no idea.”
His eyes narrowed as a smile played about his lips. “Right.” He touched her nose. “Your nose is growing.”
This was like it had been that first day. Electricity—chemistry—tingling the air between them. That, at least, was real.
She stepped back. “Can I trust you, Rand? I mean really trust you. Are you working for Freya? Spying on me?”
He stiffened, and she figured she’d offended him, but she had to ask the question. Her next decision hinged on his answer.
“My only employer is the US Navy. I took an oath to my country and the constitution. The Navy agreed I should follow you to Malta because it was in their interests. If they’d said no, I would have honored my oath and stayed in Virginia. But I came to Malta for you. Because I care about you. Not for Freya. Not for FMV. Not even the Navy. I’m here for you.”
His words hit her in a vulnerable spot. She hadn’t known how much she needed to hear the conviction in his voice. So much for keeping distance between them. She swallowed and took a step toward him, then cupped his cheeks in her hands.
His pull was magnetic, so she rose on her toes. He leaned down, decreasing the distance between them, but stopping shy of meeting her lips. He stared at her with such intensity, she had to close her eyes and breathe.
How many times had she imagined this moment? Every day since they’d met. Multiple times a day. Endless fantasies that were sometimes chaste, but more often carnal.
A breeze tugged at the skirt of her sundress as they stood at the top of the fort in the blazing afternoon sun. At long last, she made her wistful dreams come true and moved the last millimeters that separated them. Rand hesitated a moment, but then his arms circled her waist and brought their bodies flush together as their lips met.
He explored her mouth, soft and easy, but then Kira slid her hands from his cheeks to cradle the back of his neck as she opened to let him inside. He accepted her invitation and deepened the kiss. The slide of his tongue against hers lit a fire that competed with the scorching heat of the Maltese summer day.
Kissing Rand was better than any of those hundreds of fantasies. It was a good thing they were in a public place or she would get lost in him. Instead, she slowly extracted herself, first pulling from his arms, still with her mouth to his. She returned her hands to his cheeks and finally dropped to her heels, releasing his lips while still cupping his face.
She opened her eyes and met his intense gaze, breathing in the perfection of the moment. Then she closed her eyes again and gave him her trust. “I didn’t come here for the boat ride or to see the fort. There’s something I haven’t told you—or anyone—about the letters my father received from his so-called ‘friend.’ They weren’t mailed to the Maryland house. They were all—thirty years’ worth of letters—sent to an address in Malta. Birgu, to be exact. It’s only a few blocks away. Today, I want to go there. With you.”
The cell phone in Rand’s pocket chose that moment to vibrate. He pressed a quick kiss to Kira’s lips, then stepped back and pulled out his phone to check the screen. He frowned at seeing their hotel listed as the caller.
He hit the Speaker button and said, “Fallon.”
“Mr. Fallon, this is Renaldo at the front desk. We’ve had complaints from your neighbors downstairs about the noise in your room, but were unable to call your room phone because it’s in use. Can you please cease the hammering or whatever it is you are doing?”
Rand could see the hotel across the water and counted down the floors to spot his blue-painted enclosed balcony. “I’m not in my room. It’s been more than an hour since I was there. Send security to find out what’s going on.”
Did the hotel even have security? He’d only ever seen one person at the front desk, a breakfast attendant, and a few people from housekeeping.
“You aren’t there? Are you sharing the room?”
“No.”
All at once, an earsplitting siren went off over the phone line.
“I’m sorry sir. That’s the fire alarm. I must go.”
The phone went dead.
Rand met Kira’s gaze. “Sounds like my room has been broken into and our hotel might be on fire.”
“We should go back.”
He thought about it. If there was an actual fire, there was nothing they could do, least of all enter the burning hotel. If there was no fire and someone was just using it as cover to escape after thrashing his room, getting there thirty minutes after the person escaped would be equally useless.
It could wait.
“No. Let’s go to your address.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded.
They set out, walking down the ramps and stairs that would take them out of the fort. Several tourists shared the path, so silence was their only option.
Finally, when they were back on the cobblestone streets that abutted the fort, they found themselves in a neighborhood where the locals were sheltering from the afternoon sun indoors.
Kira must have memorized the route from studying a map because she navigated effortlessly. He followed her lead.
With the relative privacy of empty streets, he resumed their conversation. “It’s good we’re doing this now. If someone is keeping tabs on you—which is entirely possible—then they know we’re in Birgu together. Hell, with excellent binoculars, they could have watched us kiss from my hotel room. Maybe someone made noise to get the hotel to call me and pulled the alarm to stop you from dropping in on your father’s address.”
She glanced at him askance. “That’s impossible.”
He pulled out his cell phone and showed her the screen open to the tracking app he’d used to keep tabs on her this morning. It showed her location in Birgu moving down the narrow street.
She stopped in the middle of the road, her face leeched of color—not easy to do in this heat. “How? I turned off my locational data and tracking.”
