Page 12 of Her Sensual Protector

“Daisy—” Leo started.

She held up her hand. “I know that it is a Hail Mary play, but I’ve got to take it. You do what you do, and I’ll play the only hand I’m left with. All right?”

He nodded.

“Don’t you have to leave?”

He got up from the table and threw down enough Afghani bills to cover the meal and the tip. She scooped it up and tried to hand it back to him. “I’m buying,” she protested.

“Not on my watch, you’re not.” He gave her the kind of smile that sparked every feminine cell in her body to attention.

She could imagine the pittance the Navy paid him. She tried again. “I insist.” She tried to thrust the money at him again. He side-stepped her.

“You can pay next time,” he winked at her as he took a step away from the table.

“In that case, there better damn well be a next time, Handsome.”

He hesitated, then came back. “I promise, Daisy. There will be a next time.”

“Don’t think I won’t hunt you down. That’s another one of my superpowers, kind of like rattling cages. So you better keep your word.”

His grin started out slow, but when it hit full blast, it was powerful. So powerful, she almost felt a force field hit her.

Whoa!

“I keep my promises, Daisy. I’ll see you later.”

She watched as he sauntered out of the restaurant. Her hand hurt. That was when she realized she still had the Afghani bills clutched in her fist. She dropped the money down onto the table, then called the waiter over for the bill.

* * *

By the time he’d gotten to Bagram Air Base, Leo had thought through his conversation with Daisy multiple times. According to Kane’s file, Ethan Squires was quite the humanitarian, but clearly, he was a loser in the father stakes. Hell, the word loser didn’t even begin to cut it. Looking at Daisy today, he’d easily imagined her as a toddler trying to ‘fix’ her mother and find help for her.

Then when she’d said that the hospital had ‘eaten’ her mother and she was sure her mother was dead, his heart damn near exploded with rage and pain. How could a father not offer comfort to his child? It was amazing that Daisy was here in Afghanistan trying to do anything to help the man. Her love for her siblings must be extraordinary.

As for what he’d done in Pakistan, that was information Kane had already gleaned, so nothing new there.

There was one thing that was gnawing at him. He did not think that Daisy would just sit on her thumbs in wait mode while his team gathered intel and formulated a plan. Plus there was the fact that even once they had a plan it wasn’t like Leo would be able to tell her that the mission was a go. So, they had a live stick of dynamite back in Kabul who was going to do God knew what.

As he went through the myriad levels of security to get into the base, he coordinated with Kane to find out where his team had set up camp.

“Max has coordinated a closet for us to meet in. You’ll like it. Hot, humid, and it smells.”

Leo laughed.

He found the meeting room that was the size of a motel room. One of those motel rooms that you found on the side of the road at three a.m. when you couldn’t keep your eyes open anymore. And it smelled even worse than one of those seedy pay-by-the-hour motel rooms. It could’ve just been him, though, after almost two hours in the heat on his motorcycle.

“How were the suits?” Max, his lieutenant, asked. “Anybody worth a damn?”

“Tom Ludlum was there. He has a little runt who’s an absolute asshole working there at the embassy. I figure Tom’s going to put him on the first plane home.”

“Did you get a chance to coordinate with him?” Max queried.

“No. What’s more, I’m not sure he has much to add to the story. There were six men, which included the ambassador, all coming at our hostage’s daughter. They were demanding to know if she had any idea if her father associated with terrorists. They were asking shallow questions, not getting to any real depth. It was a clusterfuck.”

“What did she say?” Max wanted to know.

“She said exactly what his associate in Pakistan had told everybody, that he had been flaunting the rules, and if anything had been pissing off the locals—and as such, probably pissing off the terrorist cells.”