Striking Distance by Pamela Clare

weekend. And now he was here.
    “Are you okay?” His eyebrows pressed down in a concerned frown. “Can I get you something to drink—that bubbly water Jack promised you?”
    “No, I’m fine. I was just . . . surprised.” An understatement.
    “Sorry to give you a shock. I had no idea there was any connection between you and Nate until he told me you might come to the barbecue.”
    “Please don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” She allowed herself to look at him, to really
look
at him. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
    Oh, he was a beautiful man—dark, exotic, sensual. Some men were intelligent. Some were tall. Some were sexy. Some had thick hair or broad shoulders or natural athleticism. Some had lips that made women long to kiss them.
    Javier had it all.
    His short, dark hair had a bit of curl, his nose straight, his jaw strong. High cheekbones, full lips, and long lashes added a boyish touch to his otherwise masculine face. He was muscular without being bulky, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist.
    She’d noticed him the moment she’d walked into the restaurant in Dubai. Wearing a dark T-shirt that stretched across the muscles of his chest and shoulders, he’d stood out in a room full of European businessmen in suits and Arabs wearing traditional
kanduras
and
gutras
. When he’d come to her table to rescue her from those drunk Russians, she’d known they would end up in bed. Despite what Derek Tower might think, she didn’t make a habit of sleeping with men she met in bars. Javier was the exception, and she hadn’t regretted it. He’d been the most giving lover she’d ever had—sensual, focused, attentive to the smallest details.
    Something stirred inside her at the memory, something she hadn’t felt in a very long time—physical attraction.
    And her sense of panic grew.
    She’d thought about him for so long, wondered what it would be like to see him again. Now she knew. It was like being slapped in the face with the life she’d lost, with the life that Al-Nassar had stolen from her.
    “Neither have you.”
    She gave a little inadvertent laugh. “We both know that’s not true.”
    “I’m so sorry about what happened. I saw the news broadcast when you were taken. I . . . I’ve never felt so damn helpless in my entire life.”
    Laura didn’t know what to say. Most people avoided mentioning her abduction and what had followed.
    He stood, walked to the fireplace, added wood to the blaze. “I followed your story. What you did took brains and guts. Speaking to them in their own language. Using their culture and beliefs to force them to see you as a human being. Yielding on the outside but fighting to stay strong on the inside.”
    He spoke the words matter-of-factly, but when he turned back to face her, his gaze was soft with sympathy.
    Laura looked away, his praise making her uncomfortable. She didn’t deserve it, any of it. “I’m just lucky I was able to speak Arabic and—”
    “Luck had nothing to do with it.” His tone was adamant, brooking no challenge. “I have a world of respect for you, Laura.”
    She looked up, willed herself to meet his gaze again. If those words had come from anyone else—her mother, her grandmother, her therapist—she would have dismissed them as nothing more than attempts to distract or console her. But coming from Javier, they seemed to slip inside her.
    “I would have gotten in touch with you a long time ago, but I’ve been out of the country most of the past two years. And when I didn’t hear from you, I thought maybe you didn’t want contact.”
    “We said no strings.” She changed the subject. She couldn’t go there. She just couldn’t. “How do you know Nate?”
    “He and I served together in Afghanistan.”
    “So you
are
military.” She found herself smiling. “I knew it.”
    A dark eyebrow arched. “Oh, yeah? What gave it away?”
    “You just have that look.”
    The other brow arched. “What look?”
    But there was