Out of Time Read online

  He didn’t let her finish. “Sammie said she didn’t get a chance to really thank you. She was late to class.” He shot a sharp glare in Becky’s direction, which Natalie suspected explained his current attitude toward her teacher. Becky must have given him an earful. “We’re going to pizza on Friday. Why don’t you join us?”

  Was he asking her out? Natalie wasn’t sure, and neither apparently was Becky. But even if she hadn’t just noticed the slight flicker of hurt in her new friend’s gaze before she started studying the ground, the last thing Natalie wanted to do was go on a maybe-a-date with the county sheriff. “I’m afraid I can’t,” she said. “I already have plans.”

  She glanced across the street, hoping to make a quick getaway to where her car was parked when she suddenly froze—and gasped as she caught a glimpse of a man staring at her from behind the wheel of a black sedan stopped at the light. But it was only for an instant. The light turned, and he drove off before she could react.

  But it was as if she’d seen a ghost.

  She swayed from the force of the shock. Her knees buckled. She gave a strangled cry of “Scott!” right before everything went black.

  * * *

  • • •

  I must be dreaming.

  It had seemed like a dream the night Scott Taylor walked into Natalie’s life.

  She hadn’t felt that kind of excitement—that kind of teenage lust—since she was, well, a teenager.

  Maybe not even then.

  She hadn’t been the one to see him first. Her friend Hannah, whose engagement they were celebrating, had noticed him the moment he walked into the Capitol Hill bar with two also nice-looking and clean-cut companions.

  Hannah leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Serious eye candy at six o’clock.” She let out an exaggerated dreamy sigh. “If I wasn’t engaged, I’d go for it myself, but that guy is exactly what you need to make you forget about Todd. Six months is too long to mourn a breakup, Nat.”

  Her breakup with Todd wasn’t what had been bugging her. Todd had been great: kind, solid, steady, understanding, and wonderfully uncomplicated. In other words, exactly what Natalie needed after Mick.

  They’d dated for over two years, but Todd wanted really long-term—as in marriage—and she didn’t. How could anyone in her life be long-term?

  But Natalie didn’t object to Hannah’s premise. It was easier to let her friend think that she was nursing a broken heart than explain about Mick.

  Mikhail “Mick” Evans was a dark cloud looming over Natalie’s life that she couldn’t escape. But God, how she wished she could. Even if just to forget for a little while.

  She turned and did just that, forgetting everything in the space of one very hard slam of her heart against her ribs. She forgot that her life was a mess, that she was probably going to end up in prison—for espionage or for murder if she could figure out a way to get rid of Mick—and that she wasn’t a normal twenty-eight-year-old woman who was free to do what she wanted.

  There was no question who her friend was talking about. That dreamy sigh of Hannah’s hadn’t been exaggerated. The guy—the man—commanded attention. He stood out, and not just because of his golden-ticket good looks—although they certainly didn’t hurt.

  Eye candy was putting it mildly. He was gorgeous. Tall and incredibly fit—she hadn’t missed the muscular arms below the short-sleeved edge of his polo shirt or the flat stomach where his shirt was tucked into nicely tailored flat-front khakis—his face was tanned and chiseled masculine perfection. Wide brow, straight nose, sensually curved mouth, and slightly squared jaw. His dark blond hair was short but impeccably groomed. Everything about him was impeccable. There didn’t seem to be one thing out of place. He was seriously put together. She did a surreptitious scan of his body again. In every way.

  She shouldn’t have been able to tell the color of his eyes from this far away, but she’d bet her favorite broken-in pair of jeans that they were a riveting blue.

  And she was completely, 100 percent riveted.

  He gave off this aura of confidence bordering on arrogance that was almost hypnotic. Actually not almost. It took Natalie a moment, and a nudge by her friend, to realize she was staring. Gaping. All right, inwardly drooling.

  Nonetheless, Natalie turned back to her friend and said with a chagrined smile, “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Natalie shrugged. How could she explain that she didn’t need any more complications in her life, and a guy like that practically screamed serious complications?

  But it didn’t take long to change her mind.

  A short while later, as she fought her way through the crowded hallway from the bathroom, she’d accidentally bumped into him and spilled his beer. Embarrassed, she’d tried to buy him another one, but he’d insisted on buying her a drink instead.

  One drink had led to two, and somehow they’d ended up talking in a mostly secluded corner of the room. It had been dark and noisy but undeniably intimate. When he leaned in to listen to her responses, the heady scent of his spicy aftershave had sent her pheromones into overdrive.

  Actually her pheromones had been in overdrive pretty much since her breast had come into contact with his arm and knocked the beer out of his hand. The hot flush that had flooded her body hadn’t just been embarrassment; it had also been attraction. Instant, very hot, and very kinetic attraction. She could practically feel the sparks flying between them.

  She wanted to kiss him, and every time he leaned in her breath hitched and her pulse raced with anticipation.

  It was hard to remember that he was a complete stranger. Except that he didn’t feel that way anymore. She’d been cautious at first with the getting-the-basics-out-of-the-way introductions. He was one of those guys who walked into a room and took command. The natural-born leader type. A guy like him was probably a high-up somewhere and important men were off-limits. Natalie wouldn’t make Mick’s job that easy for him.

  When Scott—Taylor, as he’d introduced himself—told her that he was a navy seaman on leave visiting an injured friend at Walter Reed she was more than a little surprised. He looked more like a successful lawyer or lobbyist who’d just stepped out of GQ magazine. But the military certainly explained his neat, put-together appearance.

  It also made her hesitate. Getting involved with someone in the military was asking for trouble—even if he was just an enlisted sailor—if Mick ever found out.

  She probably should walk away, but she was wedged into the corner and those broad shoulders were kind of blocking her way. It was hard to look—or think—past them.

  She was also having trouble looking away from his deep blue eyes—she’d guessed correctly on the color—the dazzling white grin, and the faint shadow of whiskers that were beginning to show through his clean-shaven jaw.

  She kept thinking naughty thoughts about those whiskers grazing against her flushed and very sensitive skin, thoughts that were proving distracting. Especially for someone who didn’t have those kind of thoughts.

  But for the first time in a long time, she felt perfectly—wonderfully—normal. Like a girl at a bar who’d met a guy who she wanted to hook up with.

  That Natalie had never done anything like that even before Mick came into her life didn’t seem to matter. She felt like that girl now, and it felt pretty darn amazing. Standing in that corner with this guy who didn’t know anything about her, except her name and that she worked on the Hill as an “assistant,” Natalie felt free. What was that thing that Amish kids did in their teens? Rumspringa! That was what it felt like.

  “How long will you be in DC?” she asked, standing on her toes so that her mouth was in line with his ear and he could hear her.

  She wobbled—and it wasn’t from the wine. It was from the heat radiating from him and the nearly overwhelming urge to put her hands on his chest and see if it was as hard and