Alpha Squad. Suzanne Brockmann

as she tried to rinse the aches and soreness from her back and shoulders. Singing in the shower was a childhood habit. Then, as now, the moments she spent alone in the shower were among the few bits of time she had to really kick back and let loose. She tested the acoustics of this particular bathroom with a rousing rendition of Mary Chapin Carpenter’s latest hit.

      She shut off the water, still singing, and toweled herself dry.

      Her robe was hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and she reached for it.

      And stopped singing, mid-note.

      She’d left her robe in the bedroom, on the bed. She hadn’t hung it on the door.

      “No…you’re right. You’re not alone in here,” said a husky male voice from the other side of the bathroom door.

      Chapter Three

      Veronica’s heart nearly stopped beating, and she lunged for the door and turned the lock.

      “I figured you didn’t know I was in your room,” the voice continued as Veronica quickly slipped into her white terry-cloth bathrobe. “I also figured you probably wouldn’t appreciate coming out of the bathroom with just a towel on—or less. Not with an audience, anyway. So I put your robe on the back of the door.”

      Veronica tightened the belt and clutched the lapels of the robe more closely together. She took in a deep breath, then let it slowly out. It steadied her and kept her voice from shaking. “Who are you?” she asked.

      “Who are you?” the voice countered. It was rich, husky, and laced with more than a trace of blue-collar New York. “I was brought here and told to wait, so I waited. I’ve been hustled from one coast to the other like some Federal Express overnight package, only nobody has any explanations as to why or even who I’m waiting to see. I didn’t even know my insertion point was the District of Columbia until the jet landed at Andrews. And as long as I’m complaining I might as well tell you that I’m tired, I’m hungry and my shorts have not managed to dry in the past ten hours, a situation that makes me very, very cranky. I would damn near sell my soul to get into that shower that you just stepped out of. Other than that, I’m sure I’m very pleased to meet you.”

      “Lieutenant Catalanotto?” Veronica asked.

      “Bingo,” the voice said. “Babe, you just answered your own question.”

      But had she? “What’s your first name?” she asked warily.

      “Joe. Joseph.”

      “Middle name?”

      “Paulo,” he said.

      Veronica swung open the bathroom door.

      The first thing she noticed about the man was his size. He was big—taller than Prince Tedric by about two inches and outweighing him in sheer muscle by a good, solid fifty pounds. His dark hair was cut much shorter than Tedric’s, and he had at least a two-day growth of beard darkening his face.

      He didn’t look as exactly like the prince as she’d thought when she saw his photograph, Veronica realized, studying the man’s face. On closer inspection, his nose was slightly different—it had been broken, probably more than once. And, if it was possible, this navy lieutenant’s cheekbones were even more exotic-looking than Tedric’s. His chin was slightly more square, more stubborn than the prince’s. And his eyes…As he returned her inquisitive stare, his lids dropped halfway over his remarkable liquid brown eyes, as if he was trying to hide his innermost secrets from her.

      But those differences—even the size differences between the two men—were very subtle. They wouldn’t be noticed by someone who didn’t know Prince Tedric very well. Those differences certainly wouldn’t be noticed by the array of ambassadors and diplomats Tedric was scheduled to meet.

      “According to the name tag on your suitcase, you’ve gotta be Veronica St. John, right?” he said, pronouncing her name the American way, as if it were two words, Saint and John.

      “Sinjin,” she said distractedly. “You don’t say Saint John, you say ‘Sinjin.’”

      He was looking at her, examining her in much the same way that she’d looked at him. The intensity of his gaze made her feel naked. Which of course, underneath her robe, she was.

      But he didn’t win any prizes himself for the clothing he was wearing. From the looks of it, his T-shirt had had its sleeves forcibly removed without the aid of scissors, his army fatigues had been cut off into ragged shorts, and on his feet he wore a pair of dirty canvas deck shoes with no socks. He looked as if he hadn’t showered in several days, and, Lord help her, he smelled that way, too.

      “Dear God,” Veronica said aloud, taking in all of the little details she’d missed at first. He wasn’t wearing a belt. Instead, a length of fairly thick rope was run through the belt loops in his pants, and tied in some kind of knot at the front. He had a tattoo—a navy anchor—on his left biceps. His fingers were blackened with stains of grease, his fingernails were short and rough—a far cry from Prince Tedric’s carefully manicured hands. Lord, if she had to start by teaching this man the basics of personal hygiene, there was no way she’d have him impersonating a prince within her three-day deadline.

      “What?” he said with a scowl. Defensiveness tinged his voice and darkened his eyes. “I’m not what you expected?”

      She couldn’t deny it. She’d expected the lieutenant to arrive wearing a dress uniform, stiff and starched and perfectly military—and smelling a little more human and a little less like a real-life marine mammal-type seal. Wordlessly, she shook her head no.

      Joe gazed silently at the girl. She watched him, too, her eyes so wide and blue against the porcelain paleness of her skin. It was hard for him to tell the color of her hair—it was wet. It clung, damp and dark, to the sides of her head and neck.

      Red, he guessed. It was probably some shade of red, maybe even strawberry blond, probably curly. Yet, if there really was a God and He was truly righteous, she would have nondescript straight hair, maybe the color of mud. It didn’t seem fair that this girl should have wealth, a powerful job, refined manners, a pair of beautiful blue eyes and curly red hair.

      Without makeup, her face looked alarmingly young. Her features were delicate, almost fragile. She wasn’t particularly pretty, at least not in the conventional sense. But her cheekbones were high, showcasing enormous crystal blue eyes. And her lips were exquisitely shaped, her nose small and elegant.

      No, she wasn’t pretty. But she was incredibly attractive in a way he couldn’t even begin to explain.

      The robe she wore was too big for her. It drew attention to her slight frame, accentuating her slender wrists and ankles.

      She looked like a kid playing dress up in her mommy’s clothes.

      Funny, from the cut and style of the business suits that had been neatly packed in her suitcase, Joe had expected this Veronica St. John—or “Sinjin,” as she’d pronounced it with her slightly British, extremely monied upper-class accent—to be, well…less young. He’d expected someone in their mid-forties at least, maybe even older. But this girl couldn’t be a day over twenty-five. Hell, standing here like this, just out of the shower, still dripping wet, she barely looked sixteen.

      “You aren’t what I expected, either,” Joe said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “So I guess that makes us even.”

      He knew he was making her nervous, sitting there like that. He knew she was nervous about him getting the bedspread dirty, nervous about him leaving behind the lingering odor of dead fish—bait from the smelly bucket Blue had knocked over earlier that morning. Hell, he was nervous about it himself.

      And damn, but that made him angry. This girl was somehow responsible for dragging him away from his shore leave. She was somehow responsible for the way he’d been rushed across the country without a shower or a change of clothes. Hell, it was probably her fault that he was in this five-star hotel