Rachel Gibson - Lola Carlyle Reveals All

“Not a who.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, then returned his gaze to the tangled line in his hands. “A what.”

She could have told him he had the wrong kind of tackle for drift fishing, but at the moment she was more interested in what he had to say than in what he was doing. When he didn’t provide anything further, she asked, “Then what?” When he still didn’t expand, she sighed. “Come on, Max. I told you about the Tootsie Roll incident.”

He glanced at her, then returned his gaze to his lure. “Several years ago I was ‘retired’ from the Navy,” he began as he untangled line from the barbed hooks. “During my career, I’d pissed off a few high-ranking officials, and when one of them was appointed secretary of the Navy, he wanted me gone. So it was sayonara, Max.”

“What did you do?”

He shrugged his bare shoulders. “I didn’t always play by the rules,” he said, which told her nothing. “I did what it took to complete a mission, and for that I had a choice of retirement or federal prison.”

Okay, not exactly nothing. “Prison? What was the charge?”

“Conspiracy. At that time, I was part of the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group.” He paused and looked at her as if she might have a clue what that meant, she didn’t. “DEVGRU is a counterterrorism, intelligence, and national security unit. We also created and tested weapons, and it seems I conspired with a private contractor to defraud the United States government out of thirty-five thousand dollars.”

“How?”

“By charging them for bogus assault weapons.”

Since she was dying to know, she decided there was no harm in asking, “Did you do it?”

“Right,” he snorted, and dropped the lure in his hands. “If I wanted to hang my ass out there for the government to chew on, I’d make sure it was for a hell of a lot more money than thirty-five grand.” He moved to the side of the yacht, brought the tip of the pole behind him, and snapped it forward. He cast so far out, Lola lost sight of the lure before it dropped into the Atlantic. “All thirty-five grand will get you these days is a decent car, and a decent car isn’t worth prison time.”

“What would be worth prison time? A Ferrari?”

He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah.”

She smiled. “What took you so long to answer?”

“A Ferrari deserves some serious consideration.”

“That’s true,” she laughed. “Did you get a lawyer and fight it?”

“Yes, but when the evidence the government has against you is classified and you and your lawyer don’t have the proper clearance to view the material, you’re screwed, blued, and tattooed.”

Standing with his profile to her, his eyelids lowered against the bright Caribbean sunlight, the carved line of his jaw and chin softened with black stubble, he almost seemed like a real person with real problems. And it almost felt as if they were having a real conversation, too, and since they seemed to be communicating with each other like real people, she figured he’d want to know he was fishing with the wrong lure. “You’re not going to catch anything with that tackle,” she told him.

He glanced across his shoulder at her, the breeze drying the ends of his hair. “I think I will.”

The blanket itched the backs of her thighs and she stood. “Whoever used that pole before you rigged it with a spinner. You’ll need a jig. Something that will attract deepwater fish. You might get lucky, but I don’t think you will.”

He stared at her for several seconds before he said, “Is that right?”

Okay, maybe he didn’t want to know. Or perhaps he was like a lot of men when it came to taking any sort of advice from a woman. “Yes.”

His black brows lowered over his eyes and he shoved the end of the pole into the holder on the arm of the chair. “Maybe you should stick to what you know. Modeling undies.”

Yep, he was like a lot of men. So much for conversing like real people. “You’d be surprised at all the things I know. Before my grandfather died, he owned a fishing charter business in Charleston, and when I went to see him in the summers, I’d go out with him sometimes.” She tossed the blanket onto the seat. “And I don’t model anymore. I design lingerie. Have you ever heard of Lola Wear, Inc.?”

“Nope,” he said as he sat.

“It’s my company,” she informed him with no small measure of pride. His gaze was perfectly bland and so she elaborated a bit. “I started it with a few bras I designed myself, and now I employ hundreds of people.”

“So now you make undies instead of modeling them?”

“That’s right. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of my business.”

He laced his hands behind his head and yawned. The muscles of his shoulders and arms bunched, and dark hair shadowed his armpits. “You make anything edible?”

“No!”

“Then it’s not so surprising,” he said. “I wouldn’t know a designer label unless I choked on it.”

Max let his gaze wander up the backs of Lola’s calves to the red shawl she’d once again pinned around her waist. She’d changed out of the wet dress and into the white blouse again. Her damp bra made two very distinct marks on the front of the shirt and created a stripe across the back. Max wondered if she’d hung her panties in the bathroom like she had the day before.

She’d pulled her hair through the back of a baseball cap she’d found somewhere, and in her hands she held a fishing pole. On the end of the sturdy line, she tied two jigs several feet apart, then she cast them over the side of the yacht. She let the line play out about ten seconds before she flipped a lever on the side of the reel and stopped it.

He looked up into her profile, her narrowed eyes behind the blue lenses of her sunglasses, and the pinched determination at the corners of her mouth. Obviously, she was thinking of outfishing him, and Max would rather bite off his own tongue than admit that it might not take much to succeed. Lola pulled the end of her pole back, then let it drop down again, and he imagined that somewhere in the water below, her jig bobbed up and down, attracting the attention of unsuspecting cod or snapper or whatever was down there.

Without appearing too obvious, he reeled in his line. Slow and easy, until the lure hit the side of the yacht and popped up over the gunwale.

“Catch anything?” she asked, although it was pretty damn obvious he hadn’t.

“Just a few nibbles.” He rose from his chair and moved to the tackle box.

She raised the end of her pole, then lowered it again, and gave him an all-knowing, “Ahh.” Followed by, “Need some pointers?”

“Nope.” He cut the lure from the end of his line and dug around for something that looked like one of those jigs she’d tied on the end of hers. “But if I need some tips on how to make a bra, I’ll keep you in mind.” Despite being one hell of a caster, Max had caught exactly two lake trout in his life. Twenty minutes ago, he hadn’t been real worried about catching anything. The yacht was stocked with enough provisions to last a while yet, but she’d just issued an unspoken challenge and there was absolutely no way Max would be outfished by a girl. Especially such a girly girl.

He was a man. A meat eater. She used to model bikinis and had a little yapper dog. He’d been a member of SEAL Team Six when they’d secured Manuel Noriega, Pablo Escobar, and another half dozen dictators and drug lords. He’d been in on the planning and recovery of Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, and when Six had been disbanded, he’d been recruited by the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group to head a counterterrorist assault team. She designed panties. How hard could it be to catch a bigger fish than Lola Carlyle?

Max cast the jig over the side of the yacht and stopped it once he figured he’d let out enough line. His skivvies were just about dry, and he stuck the end of the pole into the holder. He moved through the galley to the stateroom, where he tucked himself into the shorts he’d worn the day before. For breakfast he grabbed some grapes and what was left of the granola bars, then headed back outside.

At the sound of his approach, both Lola and her dog glanced back at him. The breeze picked up the end of her ponytail and played with the hem of that shawl she was wearing as a skirt. While she continued to man her post, bobbing the end of her pole up and down, her dog hopped off the bench seat. Baby followed Max to his chair, and when he sat, the dog jumped up into his lap.

“Hey, now,” he said, and moved the dog to his left thigh. He dug out a few granola bars and tossed one to Lola. Then he unwrapped a honey and oat and fed a piece to her dog. He hated to see anything starve. Even the poor excuse sitting on his thigh.

“Didn’t you tell me yesterday that you were in Nassau on government business?”

He looked up as Lola took a bite of her breakfast. “Yep,” he answered.

With the blue Atlantic rolling beyond her, lightly rocking the yacht, she continued her inquisition. “But today you said you were forced to retire from the Navy.”

“That’s right.” Baby crunched and chewed and yipped for more. “The Navy retired me four years ago.”

She shoved the butt end of her pole into a holder, then turned to face him. “How is that possible? If the Navy gave you a choice of retirement or prison. How is it that you still work for them?”

Max set the dog on the deck and gave him a big chunk of granola. Baby quickly chomped it down, then jumped up on the bench seat and prepared for a nice nap. His morning excursion in the ocean had finally taken its toll. “Your dog has a garbage gut.”

“My dog has a name.”

“Yeah, and it’s an embarrassment to him, too,” he said, even though the little mutt was kind of growing on him. Still, the name was downright stupid, and there was no way he was going to say it out loud. Not even if someone threatened another beating or another round of torture.