“A do-over?” He wrapped his arms around her and realized her thin shirt was useless in the damp. Like shivering, laughter was one of the body’s ways to generate heat. She needed more, so he shrugged out of his leather jacket and maneuvered her into the sleeves. “You’re not having fun?”
She snuggled into his coat with a sound that reminded him of guys breathing steam off coffee post-night patrol, and her laughter subsided into full-body hiccups. That type hurt like hell.
“I must not be a very good guide.” He buried his face in her hair and inhaled the lingering echo of her citrus shampoo, a hint of normal.
“Don’t expect—” another hiccup, but weaker this time, “—a tip.”
“I’ll make it up to you with the best dinner of your life tonight.” He remembered his last meal at Cesare’s, the tiny restaurant that guarded an entrance to his secret apartment. “You, me and pappardelle al cinghiale. Pasta and simmered wild boar sauce.” Maybe she’d have a drop on her chin he could rub with his thumb. In the dark he recalled how, when she drank the last sip from a wineglass, she tilted her head until the line of her throat invited him to taste her. Hell yes, he’d take her to Cesare’s, and then to his concealed rooms. The thought of her naked and wet in his private pool threatened to weaken his knees; he couldn’t allow himself to imagine more until they made it out of this. “Ready to drive on?”
“Army ready.”
She could handle anything. Maybe even the truth about who and what he was.
“My stay was most pleasant.” Deep in his English persona, Draycott spoke to the clerk like an old chum while he signed the charge slip for his room at the Hotel D’Inghilterra. “I regret that an emergency with my elderly aunt—a broken hip, and she’s my late mum’s sister—calls me to Lancashire.” He sighed. The emergency requiring that he vacate the hotel was more dire than a broken hip. “There was one place I intended to see...”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’ve visited the Paris sewers and intended to poke around for a similar tour here in Rome but didn’t have time. By chance, do you know of one?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“I must have been mistaken that Rome had historic sewers. Perhaps I’m thinking of Vienna.” He folded his reading glasses into his tweed jacket. Someone on this amateur team he’d been forced to use had countermanded his directive to observe at a distance, with ugly results. One man was missing, one required arm surgery and one had been rendered faceless when Wardsen and the doctor disappeared like alligators down a sewer.
“We also have such sewers, but in Rome tourists may only view the exit.”
“Where might that be?” Ten minutes ago, the Director had clarified that the men should be removed from the worsening situation. Not pulled out. Not relocated. With the pending arrival of a better team, they’d become loose ends.
“The Cloaca Maxima is opposite the island in the river near the Bocca della Verità.”
“Ahh.” Draycott beamed and nodded like a satisfied elderly tourist. “Quite near.” Close enough for Wardsen to handle the unpleasant parts of Draycott’s next task, if he pointed the remaining men that way.
Theresa’s leather boots had soaked through, and her feet had passed cold en route to dead numb as they trudged the sewers. She’d stopped counting paces, ceased trying to measure time or distance, and now she merely worked to keep her feet moving on the slightly sloped stones.
Her face registered a breeze and she lifted a hand, but Wulf snatched her backward.
“Our tunnel’s reached the main one. Let’s not fall in.” He gripped her tightly. “The Cloaca Maxima’s deeper and faster, but the catwalk’s on our side, so we don’t have to cross.”
The jacket he’d given her didn’t cover below her hips, but pressing close to his body warmed her butt and thighs as efficiently as leaning against a radiator.
“We’re going downstream,” he continued. “We’ll use noise discipline. If I squeeze your shoulder, it means halt. Two taps means move out.”
Downstream. Closer to the main exit that everyone in Rome knows. “Isn’t that where these men could enter the sewers to find us? Why not the other direction?” She pushed out of his arms, one of her hands on the wall to orient herself away from the open drop. “We could bang on a courtyard entrance until someone lets us out.”
“Not my way.”
“None of this, absolutely none, is my way.” Frustration expanded her chest until her bra started to bind. “It’s not my way to kidnap people, steal cars, fire guns on busy streets.” Maybe that wasn’t fair, because he hadn’t done that, the bad guys had, but the point was basically the same. “I want this to end. If that means running away, then let’s do it!”
“Listen, Captain, you outrank me but you don’t know close-quarters battle.” His face was so near his breath seared her skin, hot like the sun at Ostia. “The sewers are my turf. Up there, explanations are a total bitch. Down here, I have nothing to hide, nothing to clean up, got it? We have the advantage, so I say we take it.”
“You say—”
“Stop telling me how to do my job!”
“You’re right. This isn’t my job.” Stuffing her hands in the jacket pockets was the only way to stop herself from jabbing randomly in the dark until she poked something, preferably him. “My job is saving people. I’ve been too flexible on that today, but I took an oath to do no harm.”
“Count on it, these guys want to put the harm on us.”
“I’ve gathered that. So why are we headed right for them?” She paused for a breath, but this time he didn’t interrupt. “If you want me to go that direction, you’ll have to knock me out and carry me like the guy at Ostia.”
“Fine.” The gritty clack of his teeth gnashing, amplified by the dark and her imagination, sounded as loud as grinding gears. “You stay here, I’ll head downstream and make sure it’s clear, then come back for you. Waste of time, but will that make you happy?”
“I’m not a suitcase. I won’t be here. I’m going upstream.” She hoped he couldn’t tell that the thought of striking out alone almost paralyzed her.
“You are the most frustrating...” He sucked air through his teeth. “Exasperating...”
“Keep digging, Roget,” she said.
“Irritating...woman!”
“Then you shouldn’t have followed me to Rome!” The tension emanating from him was so palpable she could nearly taste it. It drove her darkness-enhanced senses into a matching frenzy and vanquished the cold and fear, replacing them with heat that pulsed through her veins and required deep breaths to slake her need for air.
“I couldn’t help it.” Given his growl, he had to be speaking through a clenched jaw.
“I’m some mythical siren you can’t resist? Forgive me if I don’t buy that.”
“You should.”
The air between them changed as if lightning had struck, shocking her into silence when he found her shoulders and drew her so close that their legs entangled.
“Sometimes you’re so clinical.” His voice, lowered in tone and volume, wrapped around her as deftly as his hands. “You act arrow straight, all by the book with your questions.”
When he brushed her hair from her forehead, her body no longer felt stiff. The heat of his thighs relaxed her frozen muscles. On their own, her hands sought his body and wrapped around his back. He was definitely a weakness of hers.
“When you get fired up about postpartum depression, or the wasteland of women’s health care in Afghanistan, or the symbolism in a Renaissance fresco, or I piss you off—”