Read Online Running Hot by Helenkay Dimon - Free Book Online Page A

missiles are we talking about? How big is this threat?”
    He tugged her in closer, until they stood only about a foot apart, and rested their joined hands against his chest. “What did your briefing on the weapons say?”
    â€œTigana got away with at least thirty.”
    Talk about bad intel. “The number is closer to five hundred.”
    â€œWhat?” Her hand and jaw dropped at the same time. “How did that happen?”
    He’d asked that same question a hundred times. He’d nearly been kicked out of a briefing and taken off the assignment after demanding answers. “Don’t look at me. I wasn’t in charge of guarding the Stingers.”
    â€œAnd if you had been?”
    That was pretty fucking easy to answer. “Tigana wouldn’t have them.”
    One of her eyebrows lifted. “You’re that good?”
    â€œYes, I am.”
    She smiled. “That’s strangely comforting.”
    Good thing she thought so. That might make the next few hours easier. “See, we’re getting along better already.”

Chapter Six
    T ASHA DIDN’T DO wonky things. She’d been trained to handle dangerous and avoid dumb. What she wanted to do with Ward involved a lot of naughty, which made even entertaining it shockingly dumb.
    Here they were in the middle of a foreign country, tracking down a nutcase holding what she now knew to be a frightening cache of weapons. In good news, no one followed them and her safe house stood well off any trail and miles from where they believed Tigana and his men were holed up, planning whatever awful thing they intended to do next.
    Ward wanted to contact Ford. She tried Gareth again without any success. The man had a drinking problem, which was only outdone by his women problem. Tasha hoped he was sleeping off a drunken sex stupor in a bure somewhere.
    That left her and Ward with a few things to do. They needed to take an inventory of weapons and map out a surveillance plan that would lead to securing the missiles.
    All appropriate to the mission. All made sense. The raging need to jump on Ward and strip his clothes off didn’t. With every step they’d taken from the truck site to here, the wanting inside her burned hotter. She chalked the unwanted sensation up to adrenaline or a mix of unspent frustration and energy.
    Whatever the answer, it wasn’t going away—the jumping inside of her, the churning that had her sneaking peeks at him instead of thinking about ways to take down all of Tigana’s men. She needed to burn this off and only knew one way. It was for the job, really. Okay, mostly for her, but still . . .
    She watched Ward walk around the small structure she’d staked out as a temporary hideout weeks ago when she set up her cover. The place had been abandoned, and she paid to keep it that way. Men worked nearby farming kava but stopped their workdays around noon. As the work area moved farther away, the cabin got left behind.
    The structure consisted of metal siding tacked and nailed to pieces of wood. Little more than a shed to people outside of Fiji, but not that unusual a dwelling for people in the lower economic rungs here.
    She checked it every few days, storing extra clothes and a few supplies in a waterproof bag buried under the makeshift mattress. She kept a cache of emergency weapons outside, hidden up in the trees—a choice that struck her as an unnecessary precaution a few days ago but with her truck confiscated looked pretty smart right now.
    Ward did not appear impressed. He had his hands on his hips and wore one of those male frowns that signaled displeasure. “This is basically a lean-to.”
    Of course, more comments like that, and he might just annoy the desire right out of her. “It has four walls.”
    â€œOkay.”
    Sure, the place measured about ten by ten, but it had a roof . . . of sorts. It sat away from everything and out of Tigana’s targeting range. The